


Treading Water

by TheFullCatastrophe



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Coming of Age, Danny as Triton, F/M, Gen, Merperson Danny Fenton, Tucker is the Master of Puns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:22:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 29
Words: 143,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28431612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFullCatastrophe/pseuds/TheFullCatastrophe
Summary: "This is the story of why we had to start calling Danny Fenton, Danny FINton. Get it, Danny? 'Cause you have FINS? Oh, I kill me."- a summary by Tucker Foley.
Relationships: Danny Fenton/Sam Manson, Danny Fenton/Valerie Gray
Comments: 49
Kudos: 75





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have been posting Treading Water on fanfiction.net for about six years. Recently (finally?), I created an AO3 account and decided to crosspost the story here. I've only had an AO3 account for a few months, so I apologize if I don't understand the etiquette or make some tech errors. Give me some time to get my sea legs. ;D 
> 
> So, yes, if you are new to Treading Water - welcome! This is a merpersonAU, and as one of my readers said recently, "conceptually a very odd story". But it's fun to read, fun to write, so please take your shoes off, wiggle your toes in the sand, and stay awhile! I'll be posting 3 chapters per day until we're caught up with the 28 chapters over on FF.net. 
> 
> My favorite thing about Danny Phantom has always been the human characters. So, this story strives to maintain the human characters as closely to canon as possible, merely replacing ghosts with merpeople and the Ghost Zone with the ocean. The ghostly characters did not cross over very well, being just too ghostly – so while some of their personas might show up (hint hint), the merpeople will mostly be OCs.
> 
> Besides that, this story deals with many of the same themes as the show and many of the same character-to-character relationships and developments. I hope you can enjoy it.
> 
> Danny Phantom belongs to Butch Hartman, and you can assume I have nothing to do with any other franchises mentioned in this story.

_"Those who live by the sea can hardly form a single thought of which the sea would not be part."_

― Hermann Broch

* * *

Danny Fenton sat in the interior of the Fenton Family Merfolk Assault Craft – or as he and his sister preferred to call it, "the Boat" – feeling bitter about life, the world, and generally everything.

First of all, he hated water. He had nearly drowned in the ocean as a kid, sucked out from the beach by a nasty riptide. If not for some observant surfers nearby, Danny would have died. Since then, he had been terrified of water and had never even learned how to swim.

His parents knew that. But did they care? Judging from how they forced him to go out on the Boat once a month, with nothing more than a life jacket and the words "You'll be fine!" – probably not.

That was second. He hated the Boat. He hated it, its name, and all it stood for. Seriously – the Fenton Family  _ Merfolk Assault Craft _ . It was enough to send people running. It  _ had _ sent people running.

It was no secret that the whole town thought the older Fentons were nut cases. Who wouldn't? They wore brightly colored wetsuits around town at all times and hunted mythical creatures for a living. At least they had lived in Amity Beach long enough for everyone to get used to their eccentricities, to learn that despite being fruitloops, the Fentons were harmless.

It was also enough time for Danny and his sister Jazz to convince people that they wanted nothing to do with their parents' work. So while Jack and Maddie Fenton were greeted everywhere by looks ranging from strong disapproval to resignation, Danny and Jazz usually received ones of pity or, at best, no reaction at all.

Jazz had made up for her parents' shortcomings by being the best she could at everything she did. She was the smartest kid at Neptune High School, student council president, and had recently been voted by the student body as 'most likely to succeed'. She was also an insufferable know-it-all and consequently had no friends. If that bothered her or not, Danny couldn't tell.

Danny, meanwhile, had gone the other route, striving to be as normal as possible. He was remarkably unremarkable and proud of it. He maintained a B-average in school and was not particularly good at anything, unless playing video games and having a disproportionate knowledge about space exploration could be counted as talents. Maybe the second one, but until he brought up his math and physics grades, it was entirely useless. So what if he and his best friend Tucker were called 'losers' by the popular kids at school? Most of the time they flew off the radar, and that was just how Danny liked it.

There was a knocking and some squeaks as the hatch opened, flooding the cabin with sunlight. Danny heard his dad's voice: "Where are you going, Jazzypants? You don't want to hear the story of how your mother and I first started hunting merpeople?"

The redheaded sixteen-year-old scoffed. "Like I haven't heard it a hundred times already? No thank you." 

Jazz climbed the ladder down into the accommodation of the Boat and closed the hatch behind her. She glanced at Danny, hunched over and tense, and rolled her eyes, clearly finding his company only marginally better than her parents'. Then she threw herself into a chair and opened the book she was carrying. Probably  _ Psychology for Smart People  _ or some other nonsense.

"Dad regaling you with stories of their youth again?" said Danny, grinning smugly.

Jazz made a show of lowering her book. "Little brother stating the obvious again?"

Danny scowled at her. "Geez. Sorry for trying to have a conversation."

"If I wanted to have a conversation, I wouldn't have come down here. Now  _ shh _ . I have to finish reading this by tomorrow to keep on schedule."

Jazz had recently discovered the reading list for graduate psychology programs and decided she needed to start reading the books now if she ever hoped to both finish them and fully understand them. It hardly mattered that graduate school was six years down the road. That was simply the type of insufferable know-it-all Jazz was.

Continuing with his list – thirdly, Danny hated being stuck on a boat with his family on a perfectly good Sunday. The  _ last _ Sunday, in fact, of Danny's summer and the last day of his pre-high school life. Tomorrow, Danny would enter the ninth grade at Neptune High. He had wanted to spend today savoring the last hours of freedom, preferably by playing games at the arcade with Tuck and washing it all down with a shake and fries at the Nasty Burger.

No. Instead he had been woken up at the crack of dawn and thrown on the Boat.

Danny sighed. He was feeling really cramped. Surely it had  _ nothing _ to do with the annoyance coming off of his sister in waves.

Speaking of waves… had they just gotten stronger? Yes, the Boat was definitely rocking more than before. Danny was starting to feel sick. He needed air.

While the deck of the Boat was a lot more dangerous than below, Danny decided to venture up there, first checking, of course, that his life jacket was secure. It was a hot, sunny August day, but the wind was whipping cool across the waves. Danny breathed it in with relish.

He quickly located his parents. His father was lounging at the wheel, leaning back in his seat with his feet propped up. Jack Fenton was larger than life – tall and broad and unbelievably clumsy in spite of all the strength he possessed. He also insisted on wearing a dayglo orange wetsuit at all times of day, so that he would always be ready to hit the water. Danny's mother, Maddie Fenton, was meanwhile seated on a bench, monitoring a device and occasionally taking notes. Unlike her husband, she was of normal proportions, with short auburn hair and purple eyes. But unfortunately she also insisted on constantly wearing a wetsuit. At least hers had the decency of being turquoise.

Danny still found it hard to believe that his parents had once been marine biologists. More importantly, they had been perfectly normal. There were pictures to prove it; there really had been pre-wetsuit days.

"Danny!" his father boomed upon seeing him. "I was just blathering on about my college days! Did I ever tell you the story of how your mother and I started hunting merpeople?"

"Uh, you kind of tell us every time we come out here, Dad."

Maddie shot her son a sympathetic, knowing smile and recorded another number in her notebook.

Completely disregarding what his son had said, Jack continued telling his story. "Well, when your mother and I were in college, we were studying to be marine biologists, along with our best friend Vlad! You know good old Vlad. Anywho, during our senior year, we got the opportunity to go out on the ocean with our professor's team to study whales. It was going fine, until one night, the water went flat. Nothing was moving, no waves, no wind, nothing. We tried using our motor to sail through it, and even that wouldn't budge us. Then, if you can believe it, the water came alive like giant octopus tentacles and started grabbing people off the deck!

"I was the first to react in a way that wasn't, you know, screaming – and I grabbed our prof and your mother and hauled them below deck. I was just on my way to get Vladdy when the water ropes got to him, too! Pulled him right over before I even had a chance to grab on. I thought about diving in after him, but I knew if I did I’d be a goner. By that point, the whole team had been swept right overboard! I ended up going down to hide with your mother and our prof to wait it out. We didn't come out until morning. We thought we were the only ones to survive.

"They never found the other members of the team, and for about a month, we thought Vladdy was a goner, too. No one would believe us when we tried to tell them what happened. Our dear old professor lost her job over it." Jack shook his head sadly. "We even started to doubt ourselves. That is, until Vlad washed up on the shore several miles north of Amity Beach! Turns out he was being held captive by some merfolk for all that time. He managed to escape somehow – too traumatized to ever tell us how – and the rest of the team, well…"

"Yeah, I know. The merpeople ate them," finished Danny blandly. Jazz wasn't kidding when she said she had heard the story a hundred times. A few months ago, she had explained her theory on their father's bizarre, frequent retelling of the story like this: Jack liked to tell it when he was feeling discouraged about the existence of merpeople, as a reminder. It was like his mantra.

Danny guessed today was one of those days.

Jack raised his brows and nodded emphatically. "They did indeed! But thanks to Vlad, we now know all about the threat of merpeople and even have some knowledge about how to fight them!"

Danny added another mark to his list. That was right – fourth of all, he hated Vlad Masters, the biggest fruitloop of them all. He had only seen this man a few times in his life, but he had always struck Danny as a creep. Mr. Masters was some sort of billionaire, having giving up ocean science in exchange for business, but it was his DALV Corp that funded Fentonworks. In other words, it was Vlad Masters's fault that the Fentons had the means to turn merhunting into a career. Maybe if this rich college buddy wasn't encouraging Danny's parents with fat checks in the mail every year, they would have just kept on being perfectly normal, respectable scientists.

"So, son, that is why we do what we do. If we didn't, no one else would."

Wondering what Tucker was up to, Danny said, distractedly, "Right. And how many merpeople have you found so far?"

"Well, none… But, they are definitely out there! It's just a matter of time before we crack their nest. It's somewhere in these waters."

His parents had numerous buoys monitoring for the merpeople's chemical signatures – whatever that meant – but the majority of their hunting involved investigating mysterious disappearances along the North Carolina coast or taking the Boat out and scanning the ocean floor for suspicious activity. Like they were doing today.

They spent the rest of their time inventing different weapons and shields to use against the merpeople's supposed 'powers'. Deciding that the MAC was not sufficient for direct offense, they had also spent the last five years designing some sort of submarine – the Fenton Siren Speeder – that they hoped to finish within the next few weeks. It was supposed to withstand enormous amounts of pressure while still being able to maneuver at remarkable speeds, all the while toting various anti-merfolk weapons and shields. It would, in his parents' words, "revolutionize merhunting", taking it "to the next level".

"Yeah, so anyway, when are we going home?"

Maddie lowered her equipment to the bench beside her and looked at her son, frowning worriedly. "Are you okay, sweetie? Are you feeling sick?"

Danny rubbed the back of his neck. "Actually, yeah, a little."

"That's right," Jack said, "you start school tomorrow, don't you, Danno?" He shuddered. "I remember high school. I'd be sick, too!"

Maddie's frown deepened. "Maybe we should head back. You shouldn't be sick on your first day."

"Really?" Danny gaped. He'd never convinced them to go home early, no matter how much he protested.

He never thought he'd say this, but –

"- thank God for school," said Danny, blasting three cyber-clones off the bridge.

" _ Four words I never thought I'd hear in one sentence _ ," Tucker replied. His avatar cleared the remaining enemies, and the two started collecting the drops.

It was Sunday evening. For once, the Fentons were home early after a day of family merhunting, and Danny was using his precious free time to play Doomed 2 with Tucker. Ironically, the new Doomed game had come out three days earlier – just in time for school to start. The gaming company was probably conspiring against mankind, but Danny wasn't going to dwell on it. There was no time to waste.

"I'll say," said Danny. "How far do you think we can get tonight?"

" _ I'm thinking we can get to the Lagoon of Viral Insanity by midnight, no sweat. That one player's already cleared it." _

"You mean the guy going solo through here? The guy who's never died once and has the highest level in the game?"

" _ Yeah, him! _ "

"Tuck, I think you must have missed some of the sarcasm in my voice."

" _ No, seriously! If HPcthulhu13 could do it solo, the two of us should be able to get there easily. Come on!" _

And so, the two boys played late into the night, long past either of their mothers' warnings to go to sleep, and only when they had reached the Lagoon of Viral Insanity and defeated its boss at three in the morning did they quit playing.

Seven o'clock a.m. rolled around way too soon. Danny struggled to wake up, to shower, to put on the most basic outfit, and he was still red-eyed with fatigue as he ate a bowl of cereal for breakfast. As usual, he was alone in the house that morning. Jazz had already driven to Neptune High by that point, to take care of some sort of welcome speech she would be giving during the school assembly, and their parents always hit the water before sunup.

His parents had many years ago dubbed their house 'Fentonworks'; the name represented not only their location and business, but also their absurd desire to slap the name 'Fenton' on everything they touched. Danny didn't especially like it, but all of Amity Beach knew their address as Fentonworks, and there was little he could do to change that.

Fentonworks was located on a beach-side cliff on the north end of town. The property and the beach below it for about a quarter of a mile was privately owned by the Fentons, paid for by Mr. Masters. They had built a dock there where they kept the MAC and several other, smaller boats. Their main lab, meanwhile, was built into the side of the cliff itself, directly below the house, and could be reached by a set of outdoor steps or by the elevator… in the kitchen.

Afraid someone who needed merperson help might not be able to find Fentonworks, Jack and Maddie had installed a huge, neon, arrow-shaped sign on the front of the house, pointing directly at it.

And this was what Danny called 'home'.

He gave the monstrosity little thought as he left that morning. He met Tucker Foley at the other boy's house a few blocks over, and together they walked to school. In silence. Tucker looked as bad as Danny felt.

"Whose idea was it to go all the way through the Lagoon of Viral Insanity?" said Danny as the high school came into view ten minutes later. He was not looking forward to stepping through those doors.

"Shut up," retorted Tucker weakly.

Sooner than either would have liked, Danny and Tucker arrived at the front of the school. A cheerful banner stretched across the entryway, reading, "Welcome, new students, to Neptune High School! Home of the Neptune Narwhals!" in bold blue and gold letters, accompanied by a smiling, cartoon narwhal wearing a football uniform.

Danny and Tucker walked inside, partially driven forward by the crowd of students flooding the hall. They escaped long enough to dig out their schedules and dove back in to find their lockers. Danny's was closest, so they stopped there first, and Tucker played on his PDA while Danny tried out his locker combination.

"Hey! Fentina!"

Danny groaned. He didn't even have time for a sarcastic quip before he was being shouldered roughly into the lockers by a big blonde boy wearing a letterman jacket. The football player laughed and high-fived his friends, saying, "Nothing like starting off the year with a little bit of nerd-bashing." Sneering at Danny, he added, "Smell you later, Fenturd."

Rubbing his injured arm, Danny watched the boy walk away. "Great. I'm still his favorite."

The football player was Dash Baxter. Despite being a freshman, Dash was already in line to become star quarterback for the Neptune Narwhals, and he had been 'king' of the A-listers during junior high, his girlfriend Paulina Sanchez reigning at his side. No doubt it would be the same - in fact, probably worse - now that they were in high school.

Tucker shrugged. "Hey, could be worse."

"Says the guy who  _ wasn't _ just shoved into the lockers."

The techno-geek raised his hands defensively. "I'm just saying – at least you're not Mikey, having to do Dash's homework all the time."

"Yeah, I guess you're right. And yet another reason it pays to not have good grades."

"You said it."

Tucker and Danny had been friends ever since elementary school. Danny'd had a hard time making friends back then, mostly because none of the other kids' parents had wanted their children getting too close to the Fentons. The Foleys had been the only ones to take pity on Danny and not separate Tucker from him.

It may have had to do with how Tucker was also having a hard time connecting to the other kids. Tucker had been a cheerful, friendly child, but all he had wanted to do was play video games, while the other kids his age were all playing at the beach. Danny had already had his drowning incident by this point, so when he found a kid who was one – willing to talk to him and two – not the least bit interested in swimming… Well, there had been no separating them.

These days, they still did everything together. They had never stopped being outcasts, but even though it made it hard to find a girlfriend, they usually didn't care about where they were on the social ladder.

Speaking of girlfriends… Just as Danny managed to open his locker, Tucker, slack-jawed, tapped him on the shoulder and pointed.

Gliding down the hall now was the entire group of A-list maidens. At their head was Dash's girlfriend, Paulina Sanchez, who had been captain of the cheerleading team in junior high school and was aiming for the position again. At her side was her best friend Star, who was currently dating Dash's best friend Kwan. These four – Dash, Kwan, Paulina, and Star – formed the heart of the popular kids in grade nine, while everyone else revolved around them.

While Paulina and Star were taken, the other A-list girls were splendidly single. Danny had actually had a long-time crush on Valerie Gray, who had venomously ripped out and stomped on his heart last year when he attempted to act on those feelings. Since then, he had just admired her from afar. Tucker, on the other hand, would be happy with any girl who would be willing to give him the time of day.

The sea of students parted before the group, and streams of drool could be seen sliding down some chins.

Summer had done something to the girls. Something was different. They seemed  _ softer _ , more womanly, more beautiful.

At the back of their group trailed the most enigmatic of the A-list girls, Samantha Manson. Her family was filthy rich and lived in a huge mansion on the west side of town; apparently someone in her family had been the one to invent the machine that swirled cellophane around deli toothpicks, and they had amassed a fortune from it. Unlike the other girls, Samantha chose to wear dark, muted colors to match her black hair, and she was more often than not reading books while the other girls did their makeup. She always seemed aloof, to the point of looking bored, no matter where she was or what she was doing. Except for when she was swimming. Swimming seemed to be the only thing for which Samantha showed any passion.

In the middle of his gaping, Danny's eyes met Samantha's purple ones. He took in her subtle, dark eye makeup and intense gaze for a second, before her ever-uninterested eyes slid away.

Danny had a brief thought – she could be very pretty if she didn’t look so sad all the time.

As quickly as it crossed his mind, it was gone, just like the A-list girls. Sighing wistfully, Tucker said, "I guess I'd better find my locker."

Equally wistful, for a certain Miss Gray who had been looking strong and capable in yellow today, Danny replied, "Yeah…"

While they walked to Tucker's locker, Tucker remarked, "You know, maybe high school won't be all that bad."

Danny nodded, feeling uncharacteristically optimistic. "You're right. Avoid Dash, get good grades, find a girlfriend by prom. I think we can do this." Even he, Danny Fenton of the Freaky Fentons, could have a normal high school life. He smiled at the thought.

Tucker held out his fist. "Fist bump promise?"

Danny knocked his knuckles against Tuck's, grinning. "Fist bump promise."

Little did Danny know, keeping that promise would be much harder than he could ever have imagined. And all of his problems, just like his first day of school at Neptune High, would begin with Dash Baxter.


	2. Chapter 2

" _He was swimming in a sea of other people's expectations. Men had drowned in seas like that."_

― Robert Jordan

* * *

High school clearly was not going to be a walk in the park, but all things considered, Danny's first day was going well.

They had to sit through the obligatory welcome assembly, during which Jazz gave an 'inspiring' speech that none of the students listened to, followed by a speech by the vice principal and head English teacher, Mr. Lancer, about how their entire futures depended on these next four years. That had turned Danny's blood cold. So maybe Lancer was being over-dramatic, but his words rang true – if Danny did not get good grades here, he wouldn't get into any prestigious science or engineering programs in college and then would never get into NASA's space program.

It instilled a sense of urgency in Danny that he didn't know what to do with, and he sat through first period tapping his fingers against his thighs.

First period was Freshman English with Lancer, who was even less pleasant up close. He carried himself with a smug air and had a voice that droned. Jazz had once told Danny that Lancer liked to shout out book titles – and while it was funny, it was usually when something bad happened. That was looking to be the most interesting part of the class, but it would still be lost on Danny, who wouldn't recognize most of the titles anyway.

It was an interesting mix of people in first period English, like the office ladies who made the schedules had been trying to organize a social experiment.

… and as soon as he made that comparison, Danny realized he'd been spending too much time around Jazz.

… but it was true. In this single classroom, there were football jocks, cheerleaders, band geeks, choir nerds, honors-track students, a couple of science/math protégés who belonged to the chess club, some  _ actual _ nerds – the kind who played table-top games like D&D or Magic the Gathering – and finally, the two outcasts who didn't fit into any group and had just been dubbed 'losers', Danny and Tucker. They just needed some Goth students and the collection would be complete.

It was so that, as soon as every student realized who their allies were, there was a mad dash to grab seats. Danny and Tucker, used to being walked over, had grown really good at moving quickly around people and were able to get some prime seats in the back of the room. Sliding into them, they grinned at each other and exchanged a high-five.

"Yes!"

As it turned out, Samantha Manson either was not very good at moving through people or just didn't care, because she was the last person to claim a seat, and the only seat left open was next to Danny, between him and the window.

Paulina Sanchez saw this and gave Samantha a look that might have been called 'sympathetic' by a person who did not know how to read human facial expressions. To everyone else, it looked more like 'spitefully amused'.

"Oh, that's too bad," said the Latina, barely hiding a smile.

Samantha Manson just shrugged and sat down, immediately drawing out a book.

Tucker jabbed Danny sharply in the side. Ignoring Danny's wince and glare, he gestured frantically at the girl to Danny's left. The message was clear – this is your chance!

Danny figured that was true. If he didn't suck up the courage to talk to this popular girl right now, he knew he would sit next to her for an entire year in silence.

He swallowed nervously. He was so bad at talking to pretty girls. And Samantha Manson was pretty, no doubt about it. She had smooth black hair that was cut at chin length and a widow's peak that gave her bangs a 'swept' look as they hung to one side of her face. She wore a black and purple tank-top over simple jeans, although both were probably designer brands. Her skin was fair, unlike most of the very tan girls on the A-list, causing her dark make-up to be dramatic over her features.

To be honest, Danny had never been so close to her before. He almost had the urge to make sure he was wearing pants. No, scratch the almost part, his eyes had already flicked down – and yes, there were pants. At least he had that much going for him.

No, everyone else had pants, too. Darn it!

_ Come on, Fenton. Cool it. You can do this _ .

Danny cleared his throat. "Uh… Hi. I'm Danny."

Samantha blinked and looked up from her book suspiciously. "Why are you talking to me?" she asked. Before Danny could answer, she continued, purple eyes narrowed. "Look, if you're trying to get me to pay attention to you because I'm 'rich' or 'popular' or 'friends' with Paulina, you're wasting  _ your _ time, and you're wasting mine. I don't enjoy leading people on or playing with their feelings, and shallow losers like you who think they can climb the social ladder by following around girls like a puppy dog are just pathetic. So, save us both the trouble."

She turned back to her book.

Danny gaped. He heard Tucker snickering behind him.

Okay, so Danny was used to being shut down by people on the A-list. Dash had bullied him since elementary school, Valerie had put a dagger in his heart last year, and Paulina looked at Danny like he was some gum she had found stuck to the bottom of her shoe. But all he had said to this girl was 'Hi'. She had no reason to assume the worst about him.

Danny really hated being called a 'loser'. His embarrassment evaporated.

"Hey, I just wanted to introduce myself, say 'Hi', because you look so freakin' lonely all the time. Whatever.  _ Clearly _ it was my mistake." He glared down at his desk, wishing Tucker would stop laughing.

"You think I look lonely?" asked Samantha. Danny glanced back at her; she looked surprised.

"Well, yeah," he muttered.

Lancer chose that moment to walk into the room and begin class. He passed out a syllabus and droned on about it for the rest of the period. Danny's thoughts soon drifted away from both Samantha and English class, back to thoughts of NASA and his future, and his fingers started tapping nervously against his thighs.

Because of the assembly, they were on a shortened schedule. All of the classes that day were about the syllabi, and it grew boring really quickly. On the whole, though, all of Danny's classes looked doable, as long as he applied himself. His nerves faded as the day continued.

After English, Danny did not see Tucker again until lunch, during which time they grabbed a table together.

"Dude," said Tucker, chuckling. He took a big bite from his hamburger and through his mouthful continued, "I can't get over what Samantha Manson said to you."

Danny scowled. "I don't understand why being popular makes people think they have the right to be mean to everyone else. It doesn't make sense."

As if on cue, Dash Baxter passed behind Danny and roughly shoved the back of his head, laughing.

"My case in point," said Danny, patting down his hair. "My parents would kill me if I acted like that. They'd literally take me out to sea and throw me in with the merpeople. I mean, I'm sure I'd drown first, but you get the picture."

"Yeah, my parents, too," said the techno-geek. "Only with fewer mythical creatures. Speaking of mythical creatures… you up for some more Doomed tonight?"

"Duh. Of course."

Tucker slurped loudly at his soda. "Oh yeah, did you notice how she stared at you for the rest of class?"

Danny frowned. "What? Who?"

"Who do you think, Mr. Clueless? Samantha Manson."

His brows rose. "She did?" He hadn't noticed at all.

"Yeah! You must have left an impression on her. I wouldn't be surprised if she never spoke to you again. That, or completely ruined your high school existence. Girls are scary."

Danny slapped a hand over his face. "Great, Fenton. First day of high school, and you're already blowing it."

"Don't give up, Danny. We're getting girlfriends this year, remember? And I think I have just the plan. This weekend, you and I are going to the beach."

Danny's look was skeptical. "The beach? As in, 'fun in the sun' and 'hitting the surf' and all that?"

"Exactly," said Tucker, grinning. "Listen, it's fool-proof. Girls like guys who are athletic, tanned, and comfortable walking around without shirts. We just have to show them that's who we are, too."

"Except, we're none of those things."

"You're missing the point, Danny. Girls like those types of guys, and so girls go to the beach, where those guys are. They don't go to the arcade, where we are. So, we're totally off their radars right now. To get  _ on _ their radars, we need to go to them, and therefore, to the beach."

"Tuck, there's still the problem of us being scrawny, pale, and most comfortable when fully clothed."

"Walk the walk, my friend. Walk the walk."

"Right," Danny drawled.

"Then you're with me! Saturday?" Tucker held out a hand.

"Though I'll probably regret it…" Danny grasped his friend's hand and shook. "Fine."

They spent the rest of lunch strategizing over how to get to the next boss in Doomed.

Yes, all things considered, Danny's first day at Neptune High was going better than he had hoped – that is, until the end of sixth period.

It was math class with Mr. Falluca. The teacher had finished going over his syllabus early and had decided to let the students – whose attention spans had become nonexistent – talk among themselves for the last few minutes of class.

Tucker wasn't in this class with him, so Danny spent the time staring at the clock, thinking about how he would take a nap when he got home and trying to block out the voices of Dash and his friends, who were sitting behind him. Apparently try-outs for the football team were happening during the next period, and Dash was 'pumped'.

Danny couldn't care less. All it meant was that Dash would become quarterback and have yet another reason to like himself too much.

Finally, the bell rang. Danny stood up, grabbed his books, and started walking to the door of the classroom, only to trip as someone stuck their foot out in front of him. Danny fell to the floor, catching himself on his hands but otherwise sprawling out on the ground.

Whoever had tripped Danny probably had not meant for Dash Baxter, who had been following right behind the smaller boy, to trip too. But Dash, not paying attention, stumbled over Danny's legs and toppled forward. 

Danny heard a sickening 'smack' as Dash's face slammed into a desk before both Dash and the desk crashed to the floor. Danny quickly scrambled to his feet and backed away.

The room went quiet. Dash groaned and sat up, holding a hand to his face in an attempt to stop the blood that was quite literally gushing from his nose. " _ Fenton, _ " he growled, voice slightly garbled. The phrase 'if looks could kill' passed through Danny's mind.

Mr. Falluca was soon at the blond's side. "Mr. Baxter! Come on, let's get you to the nurse's office."

"Nurse?" Dash parroted incredulously. "But I've got football tryouts next period!"

"And a broken nose," said the math teacher. Despite being a foot shorter than the boy, Mr. Falluca was somehow able to wrestle the reluctant Dash to his feet and guide him out of the room. They left a trail of blood droplets in their wake.

The students all turned their stares on Danny, who gulped. Why did it suddenly feel like he was on the executioner's block?

Danny hurried to his final class of the day – Spanish. Thankfully, Tucker was there, too. By unspoken agreement, they claimed two desks at the back of the room.

Tucker noticed Danny's pale face immediately. "You okay?"

Danny shook his head. "What do you think Dash would do to a guy who broke his nose?"

"Wait, you broke Dash's nose?"

"Kind of. Not really. I mean,  _ yeah _ , but I didn't mean to. Someone tripped me first!"

"Hang on, start over. You broke Dash's nose," said Tucker, deadpan.

"It was an accident. Someone tripped me, and I tripped Dash, and Dash hit a desk with his face. You should have seen the blood. It was everywhere."

"I wish I could have seen it. That's awesome!"

"No, it's not," said Danny, turning two shades paler. He buried his face in his arms. "Dash is going to kill me."

"Yeah, probably," said Tucker lightly.

"Not helping, Tuck."

Spanish passed in a flash. Danny hurried to his locker, agreeing to meet Tucker at the front of the school. He just wanted to get his bag and go home. Maybe if he could avoid Dash until the next day, the blond's anger would cool overnight.

Danny opened his locker, only for it to slam shut a second later. Dash held his hand against it, fingers splayed. He loomed over Danny threateningly. Danny saw that Dash's nose was red, and he had bits of bloody gauze sticking out of his nostrils. Already, bruises were forming under his eyes – which were livid.

"Fenton," Dash growled, narrowing his eyes. Danny could have sworn that the metal of his locker was groaning under Dash's weight.

"Uh, Dash," said Danny, taking a step back. Dash took a step forward and fisted the front of Danny's shirt.

The other students in the hallway hushed, either evacuating the scene or gathering in a circle to watch.

"G-glad to see you're feeling better," Danny stammered.

"Feeling better?" hissed Dash. Flecks of spit hit Danny's face. "Do you realize what you've done?"

"Well, technically, it was-"

"I missed football tryouts because of you!"

"…So?"

Dash shook Danny, rattling his head. "So? So I won't get to be quarterback! I won't even get to be on the varsity team!"

"What's the big deal? Aren't there make-ups?" said Danny, trying to pull out of Dash's grip. He couldn't even budge.

"A make-up? Are you kidding? For a guy who broke his nose by tripping over a dweeb? I don't think so!"

"You'll still get to be on the team! E-eventually…"

"That's not good enough! I was supposed to be the quarterback! My future was resting on this. You've ruined my life!"

"Don't you think you're overreac-" Danny could not get the words out, because Dash punched him in the face.

The would-be football jock did not release the younger boy, so his punch just flung Danny's head back. Dash pulled his hand back and struck again, hitting Danny's eye, and this time he dropped Danny to the ground.

Danny’s vision was swimming. He was pretty sure his lip was split, because he tasted blood. His face hurt so badly he could hardly feel it, and Danny wondered if Dash had knocked his eye out. Could a person hit hard enough to do that?

Suddenly, Danny couldn't breathe, and his back was colliding with the lockers.

Oh. It seemed Dash had kicked him in the gut.

" _ Lord of the Flies,  _ Mr. Baxter! What are you doing?!"

Through tears and wheezing, Danny watched a sideways image of Mr. Lancer grabbing Dash's arms behind his back.

"Mr. Foley, get Daniel out of here!"

Was Tucker here? He must have been. Danny was now being led down the hall, stumbling, one arm wrapped over Tucker's shoulders.

"You'll pay for this, Fenton!" Dash shouted after them. "You hear me? You'll pay!"

Dash's threat sent a shiver down Danny's spine, and then they were outside.

Tucker led Danny down the street, to the edge of campus, before Danny gestured that he wanted to sit down. His friend gingerly helped him sit on the grass and then sat beside him. They were both quiet for a minute.

"You know," said Tucker soberly, "when I said he'd probably kill you, I wasn't being serious."

Danny prodded his face. Thankfully, he could see straight again, and his breathing had calmed down. Still, everything hurt, and he really,  _ really _ wanted to crawl in bed. For several days. "You think I have a concussion?"

"Did you hit your head?"

"No. But Dash did."

"I'll say. But I think your face took the brunt of it. You look like, like… well, whatever you look like, it's not pretty."

"That bad?" It had to be bad if Tucker couldn't even think of a joke to make about it.

Danny's bottom lip  _ was _ split, and the inside was cut open, too, where it had hit his teeth. He could already feel it starting to swell. Dash had also hit Danny's eye, and while Danny could see through it, it felt like it was swelling. As for his stomach… simply put, it hurt to move.

"You wanna go to the hospital?"

" _ You're _ suggesting that I go to the hospital? You hate hospitals."

Tucker shrugged. "Hey, they do pick-ups. Obviously I wouldn't go with you."

Danny shook his head and then winced, feeling like his blood was sloshing around in his head. "Nah, I'll probably be okay. Just gotta get home. And try to explain this to my mom."

"Fun."

"If I'm lucky, I can just sneak up to my room and avoid my family until I heal. What is that, like, a couple of weeks?"

Danny was not lucky. Tucker dropped Danny off at his front door before also heading home. As soon as Danny opened the door, he heard from the kitchen – "Danny! You're home! How was your first-"

Maddie Fenton rounded the corner into the living room. She was wearing an apron over her wetsuit, probably in the middle of making dinner. She froze upon seeing her son, and then rushed to his side.

"What happened?!" She took his shoulder in one hand and grabbed his chin with the other, turning his head side to side as she inspected the damage. "Who did this to you?"

Danny avoided meeting her eyes. "It… it's nothing. I… fell down the stairs. Like, from the top." 

Danny had been bullied at school for years. He had sworn high school would be a new start. Thus he was ashamed to admit the truth to his mom – that he was still a weakling and an outcast and a  _ loser _ .

Danny could not tell if she believed him or not. She led him into the kitchen and sat him at the kitchen table. Maddie pulled a bag of frozen peas from the freezer, wrapped it in a towel, and guided Danny's hand to hold it against his eye. "Here, sweetheart… I'll find something to clean up your lip."

"Thanks, Mom," Danny mumbled. Maddie walked out of the room just as Jazz walked into it. She sat down across from Danny, placing several textbooks and a notebook on the table. Danny wasn't surprised that she was already home; being able to drive had its perks.

"Still being bullied, huh? Was it Dash Baxter?"

Danny readjusted the peas. "What, you didn't see? I thought the whole school was there."

"What do you mean?" Jazz's aloofness finally melded into sincere concern.

"Dash tried to kill me," Danny explained. He paused, and his eyes widened in horror. "I think he really wanted to kill me."

"Come on, Dash isn’t that great, but he's no killer."

"I don't know. If Lancer hadn't stopped him, I'd look a lot worse." He looked up at his older sister. "Don't tell Mom and Dad?"

"Don't worry. Your secret's safe with me. What's your story this time?"

"Stairs."

"Smooth."

They sat in silence for another second, before Jazz smiled sadly at Danny. "Are you going to be okay? You know you can talk to me if you ever want to."

"I'm fine. But… thanks." He offered her a small smile in return.

Just then, their mother walked back into the room, carrying a bottle of peroxide, a cotton swab, and a band-aid. She knelt in front of Danny and began to clean up his face.

Maddie tutted. "You're going to have to be more careful, Danny. You're going to seriously hurt yourself someday."

Danny flinched as she dabbed at his face. "Yeah, I know. I'll try."

* * *

The next day at school, Danny discovered that Dash had been suspended for three weeks. Not only that, he had lost all extracurricular privileges – which meant he wouldn't be allowed on the football team in any capacity.

Three weeks with no Dash. Danny should have been happy. Somehow, he could only feel dread at the news.

This wasn't over.


	3. Chapter 3

" _ Ocean, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man — who has no gills." _

― Ambrose Bierce

* * *

If Danny had to sum up Tuesday, he would use the word "suck", as in "it did". He might have chosen a better word, but his vocabulary was not that large. If there was a word that captured the taste of sour milk as an emotion, that’s the one he would have picked.

No one – at least among the ninth graders, the only ones who actually cared – knew how to behave toward Danny, nor did Danny know how to behave toward them. That much was clear as soon as he stepped through the front doors of Neptune High that morning and most of the students stopped talking to openly stare at him.

His face was not helping matters any; it was practically a neon sign flashing "I was wailed on". Despite the efforts of the frozen peas, his eye had nearly swollen shut, and it was so blue it was almost black. His lip was still swollen and was marred by a cut that kept reopening.

Danny did his best to ignore everyone, hoping that eventually they would return the favor, and walked to his locker. Tucker stuck by his side like a loyal guard dog, eyes peeled for any sign of Dash or Dash's friends, ready to shout for a teacher at the first sign of trouble. They had yet to hear the news.

When Danny reached his locker, he was almost surprised to not see a huge handprint sunk into the door. He opened it and found his backpack inside, which he had never claimed yesterday. The books and binder he had been carrying before Dash attacked him, however, were nowhere to be found.

Mikey – who was even shorter and scrawnier than Danny, if that were possible – appeared at his side. Mikey was one of the only other people that Dash picked on more than Danny; in fact, whenever Danny felt sorry for himself, he would think, 'at least I'm not Mikey'.

"Heya, Danny," Mikey said, then sniffed and pushed his glasses up his nose. "How are you feeling?"

"Like a million bucks," Danny grumbled into his emptier-than-hoped-for locker. What, had Dash burned all of his stuff, too?

"Oh, you should be," Mikey continued, oblivious to Danny's sarcasm. "You're, like, a hero!"

"Yeah, I feel really heroic."

"Haven't you heard the news? Dash has been suspended!"

This time, Danny froze and actually looked at the other boy. "What."

Mikey was bouncing on his toes in excitement. "Yeah, for three whole weeks! And that's not all. Get this – he's been permanently banned from the football team. You've dethroned the king, man!"

Danny gaped, and then his blood turned to ice. "I, uh… Look, Mikey. I didn't do anything." He added under his breath, "And apparently in three weeks, I'll be dead for real."

"Sure, sure," said Mikey, winking obviously and elbowing Danny in his very sore ribs. Danny cringed and hopped back a foot.

"Look, just forget about it, okay?" said Danny. He turned to Tucker, who was in an equal state of shock. "C'mon, Tuck."

They visited Tucker's locker and then headed to Lancer's classroom. Danny looked at his feet on the way, but Tucker made sure to point out the number of people – namely Dash's friends – who were glaring at him.

Once in the classroom, Danny tried to make a bee-line to his desk, but Lancer stopped him at the front of the room. "Ah, Mr. Fenton."

Danny winced before hesitantly turning to look at the balding English teacher. He knew what his face looked like, but Lancer didn't. The older man gasped.

"Oh… how are you feeling?"

"I'm okay," said Danny, shrugging.

"Just a moment," said Lancer, and he went to his desk, returning with a stack of school supplies that Danny immediately recognized.

"My stuff!"

"You were gone by the time I realized you were missing them," said Lancer, handing them over. "I'm guessing you've heard about Mr. Baxter?"

"Yeah, I heard..."

"Of course," replied Mr. Lancer, more to himself than to his student. "I forget that rumor spreads like wildfire in a high school."

Danny gestured with his books. "Um, thanks. And… for yesterday. Thanks."

The teacher looked at him pityingly. "You're welcome. Though if I had gotten there sooner…"

Danny flushed red, and he rushed to his seat, burying his face – gently – in his arms. If there was one thing he hated more than being wailed on, it was that  _ look _ . The look that rubbed his nose in the fact that he was weak and couldn't stand up for himself. He ended up feeling more angry than grateful towards Lancer.

He heard a girl chuckling on his left side. Danny turned his head and looked at Samantha, partly in curiosity and partly in annoyance. To his further surprise, she was not looking at him. He followed her gaze to… Paulina.

The Latina girl was talking to the A-listers around her, casting Danny a look every few seconds that could have peeled paint. And Samantha was laughing.

"I haven't seen Paulina this pissed in a long time," said Samantha, grinning. It took Danny a moment to realize that she was talking to him. "You should have heard her this morning. She's furious because Dash isn't going to be 'star quarterback', and so they can't be the perfect couple anymore. I wouldn't be surprised if she breaks up with him soon."

"Sorry," Danny murmured into his arms.

"What are you sorry for? It's not like they don't deserve it."

Danny frowned at Samantha in confusion. "Aren't you friends with her?"

The girl's eyes widened, and then she turned away, to look out the window. "Right. Yeah."

Danny's mood soured further. It seemed like ages ago that he was excited to be sitting next to this girl. But these were the type of people who were popular – people who laughed at their own friends' misfortune. He buried his face again, muttering, "Some friend you are". He was too tired to care if she heard him or not.

Tuesday passed, and soon the rest of the week did, too. To Danny's surprise, none of Dash's friends did anything more to him than glare. By Wednesday, the swelling had gone out of his face, and by Thursday, everyone had stopped paying any attention to him. He did his best to ignore Samantha in every class he had with her, and as far as he could tell, she was paying him the same courtesy. High school life was starting to feel normal. There was even homework.

Then the week ended, and it was Saturday.

Tucker's beach plan was still in place.

Danny, very reluctantly, met him that afternoon outside of the "Nasty Shack", as the Nasty Burger's on-beach location was called. Danny was wearing a pair of red swimming trunks, some flip-flops, and a white tank top, which despite Tucker's scheme would be staying safely on Danny's shoulders. He still had a big, foot-shaped bruise across his ribs, which his already pale skin only helped to stand out. That certainly did not need to see the light of day. Besides, he would not be going anywhere near the water.

Danny's face had only partially healed, and so he hid his eye behind a pair of dark sunglasses. He had also applied sunscreen – liberally.

Tucker arrived, looking every bit as out-of-place as Danny felt, only in a blunderingly confident sort of way.

The public beach was in the southern part of Amity Beach, several miles down from Fentonworks. In the summer, it was packed with people every day. There was still another month of beach-going weather in the future, and the residents of Amity Beach were going to take advantage of every minute of it. From the sky, Danny imagined the sand would not be visible for all the towels and umbrellas, and the water would be teeming like it was filled with fish. It was so crowded today, Danny wondered if the whole town had shown up.

He eyed all of this dubiously and said, "Somehow I don't think 'well-tenderized dork' is going to attract many girls, Tuck. Are you sure I need to be here?" Danny figured he would try one last time to escape.

"Are you kidding?" said Tucker, slapping Danny on the back. "You're popular! You're who everyone’s been talking about."

"You might be confusing 'popular' with 'notorious'."

"Notorious? Nice one."

"Yeah? It was my word of the day."

Danny felt like he owed Mr. Lancer something after the teacher had basically saved his life, so he had decided to learn a new word from the dictionary every day. Maybe it would help him get good grades in English this year, and help him seem less pathetic.

"But seriously, Danny. You're my wing man. I need you."

"Can I be your wing man from the safety of the Nasty Shack? In the shade? With a cold milkshake?"

"Dude, you're killing me."

After quite a bit of nagging and some puppy dog eyes, Tucker managed to wrangle Danny into wingmanship. They set up shop on the sand, halfway between the waterline and Nasty Shack, conspicuously close to the towels of several A-list girls, including Paulina and Valerie. So maybe they'd had to move some other people's stuff to get such a prime location. No one needed to know that.

Danny spread his towel, and his eyes could not help but flick to Valerie every few seconds. In a yellow bathing suit, shiny with tanning oil, basking in the August sun – she was beauty in curvy, female form.

Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all. As long as he didn't have to talk to her, of course.

Nestled among the A-listers' towels was a purple umbrella with white stripes. It so obscured the person under it that Danny didn't realize for several minutes that Samantha Manson was also at the beach that day. Reclined in the shade on one arm, she lay there reading a book, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the world.

"I don't get it," Danny remarked to Tucker.

Tucker slurped loudly from his milkshake – that was the one part of Danny's counterplan that he had agreed with. "Don't get what?"

"She obviously doesn't like them. They act like she doesn't exist. Why does she hang out with them?"

The techno-geek followed Danny's gaze. "Still hung up on Samantha Manson, huh? If I didn't know any better…"

Danny narrowed his eyes. "Yeah, but I think you do. She's a first-class pain." Regardless, he continued to stare her way. "Still… why not just ditch them?"

"She's rich and mean, they're rich and mean." Tucker shrugged. "They have a lot in common." He laid a hand on Danny's shoulder. "The ways of the upper class are not for us disgruntled peasants to understand."

"Something else I don't understand is why we still like them."

Danny and Tucker gazed longingly at the pretty girls and sighed.

"We totally still like them."

The tech nerd suddenly jumped to his feet and pretended to roll up nonexistent sleeves. "I didn't come here to look and not touch!

"… Okay, that sounded a lot worse than what I meant."

Danny rolled his eyes. "I'll say."

"What I  _ meant _ was this – I'm tired of not being on the radar. I want in on this. And when a Foley wants something, nothing can stand in his way!"

"And when a Fenton wants something, he usually says something totally embarrassing and scars everyone around him for life. Tuck, seriously, I'll cheer you on from here. Okay?"

Tucker huffed, annoyed. "Fine. Be like that. I'll come back when I've found a girlfriend."

Danny watched his friend walk away, stepping clumsily through the sand. He blinked. "Guess I'll be waiting here a while."

It wasn't long before he heard nearby, "That's TF, as in 'Too Fine'", followed by several "Ugh"s. Danny laughed. That was one thing to be said for his best friend - nothing kept him down for long.

Danny spent a few minutes watching Tucker, then simply people-watching, before he lay back on his towel. He stared up at the swath of blue overhead, dusted here and there with thin clouds. The sun was hot on his skin, but he hardly noticed it. His mind was drifting up into the atmosphere, thinking about how quickly Earth was spinning, the path of the International Space Station in its orbit, which zodiac constellation the sun was currently passing through – Leo. When he looked at the sky, he felt so small. Even Earth felt small. From up there, the oceans became nothing more than blue and white smeared over the surface of the planet, like a bright little marble.

Someday, he'd look down on them from up there.

At some point, the ocean had come to represent for Danny all of the problems in his life. Some people loved the ocean, found it beautiful or majestic or some other nonsense. He couldn't think about it without all of its negative associations surfacing. 

When he had nearly drowned – his inherent weakness. 

The trips out on the Boat – how his parents were so far from normal and isolated their whole family from the other residents of this town. 

The beach – a big collection of all the people he'd never been able to get along with.

But someday, he'd be above it all. That was his lifeline.

He sat up again, resting his arms on his knees. Tucker was now some ways off, being loomed over by a muscular boyfriend. Danny looked back to the A-list girls, and he was shocked to see Samantha Manson looking back at him. When his eyes met her violet ones, she scowled, shut her book, and stormed out from under her tent.

Danny's eyes followed her all the way to the water, where she waded in and finally ducked under and out of sight.

He glared at the spot where she'd disappeared, feeling at once supremely annoyed and agitated. And frankly, he had to go to the bathroom.

Frown stuck on his face, Danny slipped his feet into his flip-flops and picked his way through the crowd to the bathrooms – narrow, one-person stalls walled by wooden planks. He did his business, and when he came back out, was grabbed by two pairs of very strong hands.

"Hello, Fentwerp," said one voice, which Danny immediately recognized as belonging to Kwan.

The second voice said, "You're coming with us."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters 4~6 tomorrow. Until then~  
> T.F.C~


	4. Chapter 4

" _ For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough they know they are in peril; well enough they know the causes of that peril;-nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown." _

― Herman Melville

* * *

In retrospect, Danny couldn't say he was surprised when Kwan and Tyler grabbed him. He had been expecting some sort of retribution since the moment Mikey spilled the news on Tuesday. But – again in retrospect, because nothing says 'twenty-twenty vision' like hindsight – Danny realized that he had let his guard down. If he had stayed with Tucker, this probably wouldn't have happened.

Now, he was being carted off and away from the crowded public beach. To a place where there would be no witnesses. What there would be to witness – or not, as it were – was Danny's only question now.

He struggled. Of course he did. But how was one short, 100-pounds-when-wet, slightly battered  _ loser _ supposed to fend off two hulking jocks?

Scream for help? Not without pulverizing the ounce of dignity he had left.

He didn't have to wait long. Within minutes, he was being hauled onto a dock, the waves lapping uncomfortably close for Danny's liking. Tyler grabbed his feet, and like a sack, tossed Danny onto the deck of a top-notch motorboat.

"Fenton."

Massaging the elbow he'd landed on, Danny winced up into the face of his nemesis. Dash Baxter.

"Uh, Dash!" he said, as though surprised. As though this was something other than what it was. "I, uh, see you're filling your free time with hobbies. Boating, huh?"  _ Babble babblety babble. What are you doing, Fenton? Do you  _ want _ your face bashed in? _

Kwan and Tyler stepped onto the deck and cut off all means of Danny's escape.

Dash sat leaning back against the wheel, arms crossed and legs spread. This was normally a relaxed posture, but the blond wore it as if he were a coiled rattlesnake, his muscles practically on display. Over the top of his sunglasses, Dash's eyes narrowed. Danny could see the lingering bruises around his nose.

"Free time? So, you expectin' a thank you or somethin'?" Leaning forward, he hissed, "You're dead meat, Fenton. Kwan, get the rope."

"On it!" Kwan untied the boat from the dock, and as soon as it was free, Dash started the engine. It lurched sickeningly, and then they were zooming out to sea.

Danny gulped. His body trembled all over. "What are you doing, Dash?"

The blond had turned his back to Danny, but his cruel smirk was still visible to the smaller boy sprawled on the floor. Kwan and Tyler looked on with amusement and anticipation.

"Thought I might give you some swimming lessons. You know, since you always skip out on them in gym. And I've got all the time in the world now. Right?"

Danny's blood went cold. He shook his head frantically. "No. You can't."

"We all gotta do things we don't like, Fenton."

Danny's breathing sped up until he was on the verge of hyperventilating. His heartbeat was loud and fast in his ears, and he felt lightheaded. "Please. I'm sorry. I didn't mean for any of this to happen. I'll tell them it was all my fault, anything. Just don't do this. Take me back.  _ Please _ ."

"You afraid of a little water?" Dash snickered, and his cronies joined in.

"I think he's crying!" said Tyler.

"Like a little baby, right?" added Kwan.

The boat slowed down, and Dash cut the motor. They were now far from the shore; the beach-goers were little more than a blur of color, and Danny couldn't even hear their voices.

He yelped when Dash's friends grabbed his arms and pulled him to his feet. Dash swiveled his seat back around to face Danny, a mean grin across his face. He jerked his head to one side and said, "Do it."

Danny started to genuinely struggle when they dragged him to the railing of the deck. He dug his feet into the side of the boat and thrashed his arms. "No! Please! I can't swim! I can't swim!"

"That's what we're here for," Dash said, voice a warped imitation of kindness. "To teach you. We're helping ya out."

"No…" Danny sobbed. That one ounce of dignity? Yeah, Danny would happily throw that away now, if it meant  _ not dying _ .

Someone grabbed his feet, and he was lifted into the air.

"One… two… _ three! _ "

On the count of 'three', they chucked Danny overboard. He hit the water face first, immediately stung by the impact and by the salt water that rushed up his nose. He sunk under the waves, and for a moment, there was no direction to anything. Then, he bobbed at the surface, head breaking the waves long enough for him to gulp down air before he sank again.

Danny flung out his arms, kicked his legs wildly, anything to stay above the water. Again, he broke the waves, but this time he inhaled water when he tried to breathe and he choked. Coughing it up only caused him to swallow more water, and soon he understood that _he_ _couldn't breathe_.

He sank again, and no matter how hard he kicked, he couldn't get back to the air. His eyes were left staring at the hazy light above, the shadow of the boat, getting farther and farther away.

A sense of urgency swelled in his chest. His body screamed, writhed, pleaded for air, and when the pain was too much, Danny inhaled. His lungs filled with burning water.

After that, everything grew murky and dark. Time stopped making sense. The pain and panic had lasted an eternity, but the end was rushing toward Danny alarmingly fast. Strangely, this didn't bother him, though a voice at the back of his mind whispered,  _ It should _ . He had begun to feel warm and sleepy. Actually, the darkness, the weightlessness, was really comfortable…

He closed his eyes.

* * *

Dash, Kwan, and Tyler watched as Fenton thrashed in the water. He was having a fit! It was hilarious. What sort of guy seriously couldn't swim at fourteen?

Kwan held the lifesaver, ready to toss it out to the dweeb as soon as Dash gave the go ahead. Fenton's head had just disappeared under the waves again, and frankly, Kwan was starting to feel a little nervous. It wasn't like anything was going to happen to the guy… but, what if it did?

"Dash…?" he prompted, voice quavering. "Dude, should we-"

Dash held up a hand, eyes locked on the water. "Hang on. Just a little longer."

Fenton's fingers poked out of the waves one more time, and then the water swallowed him. The waves regained their steady rhythm -  _ slap… slap… slap… _ \- against the side of Mr. Baxter's boat. There was no sign of the dweeb.

Kwan didn't ask again. He threw the lifesaver overboard to the spot where he  _ thought _ Fenton had gone under. His stomach felt sick, but he didn't want to think about why.

Dash didn't argue about the lifesaver. He watched it, waiting for Fenton to grab hold. Seconds passed.

Kwan held the limp rope in his hands and looked at Dash, expression one of total bewilderment, tinged with horror. "He's not… Why isn't he grabbing it?" Tyler sank onto his haunches, holding one fist against his mouth, the other hand gripping the railing to keep from falling over. It seemed Kwan's stomach was not the only one acting up.

Dash Baxter's blood had gradually drained from his face, leaving it an ashen color. Without a word, he swiveled around, started the boat's engine, and pointed them toward the shore. The lifesaver – rope and all – fell out of Kwan's listless grip and was left bobbing on the waves.

"Not a word," Dash growled through his teeth. "This  _ didn't _ happen. You hear me?"

"Oh god," said Kwan.

* * *

Danny coughed violently. Shivers wracked his frame. His skin felt like it was being stabbed by a thousand different needles. Every breath was liquid nitrogen into his lungs.

But each new breath was less painful than the one before. He eventually stopped hacking, and when his breaths had calmed from desperate wheezes to mere gasps, his eyes started to focus.

His whole vision was filled with light, soft and fuzzy, a mixture of blue and that strange pink-orange color people liked to call ‘salmon’. The light was edged by total darkness. Danny could hear the dripping of water and the gentle lap of waves against rock, so familiar to him after growing up on a beach.

He squinted and blinked, and the image resolved itself into a person's face, hovering above his own. He guessed it was a person's face, if people had electric indigo hair and eyes, pink-orange skin, and glowed in the dark. Then, yeah, it was someone's face.

Cold water dripped from the figure's hair, splashing against Danny's nose and cheeks. He twitched reflexively, and the face broke into a terrible, sharp-toothed grin.

Danny's head lolled to the side, and he saw the rest of the body. It belonged to a girl. A bizarre, glowing girl, propping herself up with her arms, wearing what looked like a halter top of hundreds of tiny white seashells, which just barely covered her chest… But her breasts (he honestly wasn't staring – and she was kind of flat-chested, anyway… not that Danny was looking) weren't the issue. It was what came next.

Her tail. Not her legs. Her  _ tail _ . It was a massive, scaly, glowing, blue fish tail. Was there a fish head attached to this tail? Nope, there was a girl.

"You've got to be kidding me," said Danny, and he passed out.

* * *

Tucker, finished "scouting", as he called it – the real victory would come another day – stared down at the beach towels. Then he looked around. "Danny?"

Figuring his friend was in the bathroom or getting a Nasty Dog or something, Tucker sat down on the towels and waited. Twenty minutes or so passed, but Tucker was still willing to give Danny the benefit of the doubt. But when the hour mark came and went, and Danny wasn't responding to any of his texts, he realized he'd been ditched.

"You jerk," said Tucker. He bundled up the towels and went home.

* * *

The next time Danny woke up, he found himself in semi-darkness. He had enough of his wits to register that he was soaking wet and freezing, and that both of these things could be blamed on the puddle he was laying in and the rocky floor beneath him, which felt more like a slab of ice.

For a while, he just stared at the stalactite-riddled ceiling, trying to figure out how he had ended up in a cave of all places. His memories came in pieces – the beach, Samantha Manson, Dash's boat. Drowning.

Oh, right.  _ That _ had happened.

He wasn't dead. At least he could count himself lucky there. Danny wasn't usually lucky, so surviving a murder attempt, and surviving drowning a second time, were both really impressive. Not that he'd be bragging about it anytime soon, of course.

Where was the light coming from?

Danny sat up. His muscles were tight and stiff. After rolling his shoulders and massaging his neck, he started looking around. Rocks, rocks, more rocks, a black pool of water, and a glowing, pink-and-blue girl.

He was hoping he'd dreamt that part.

The girl clung to the edge of the rocks, nearly submerged in the pool; only her head from the nose up rose above the water. Her long blue hair splayed around her, and her eyes, the same startling color as her hair, watched Danny intently. The glow of her body filled the cave with soft light.

Danny stared back, mouth going dry. The taste of brine was sharp on his tongue.

"You're a mermaid," he croaked. The until-recently mythical creature tilted its head. "But you knew that already…" He ran his hands through his sopping hair and pressed the heels of his hands against his temples. "Either I've gone nuts, or my parents were right."

He blinked a few times and shook his head. The mermaid was still there.

"Still banking on me not being crazy, I think I can safely say – Ohmygosh. My parents were right. Wow."

Remembering his parents' stories, the ones he had been told since he was a baby, he scooted back a few feet. "You're not going to try to eat me… are you?"

**Why would I try to eat you, dimwit?**

Danny yelped and scrambled back a few feet. The mermaid hadn't spoken, her lips hadn't moved, and Danny hadn't heard anything. Not really. It was more like her words were crawling through the cracks in his head, dribbling through his brain like water. On second thought, were they even words?

"How did you do that?"

**Why can't you?**

"Stop answering my questions with questions!"

The mermaid threw her head back and started shaking, grinning. Her too-long canines flashed. Was she laughing?

Her eyes were back on Danny. They twinkled mischievously.

She didn't seem very old. If she was human, Danny reckoned she would have been his age, maybe younger. 

Danny couldn't see any of her more… interesting features. But he noticed her fingers were webbed and tipped with black claws; her salmon-colored ears were pointed and protruded from her hair; and when she had laughed, Danny spotted two deep slits on either side of her neck that could only be gills.

He gulped. Trying to sound brave, but not entirely able to quell the tremble in his voice, Danny said, "Why did you bring me here?"

The twinkle left her eyes. She frowned at him, eyes full of pity.  **I saved you.**

"You did?" The mermaid nodded and smiled again. Danny scratched the back of his head and looked away. "Uh. Well. Thanks. I guess."

The smile widened.  **You're welcome.** Tilting her head, she remarked,  **I've never seen a human before. You're different than I thought you'd be.**

Danny chuckled nervously. He let his gaze wander around the cave, looking for the way out. "So, what were you expecting?"

**You're smaller than I expected.** Danny grunted.  **Plus, I thought you would have a net. You'd want to kill me and hang me by my tail. Then you would eat me.**

Nothing. Just slimy walls of rock.  _ You're joking, _ thought Danny as his eyes landed again on the pool.  _ That's the exit. _ "Nope. Net free. You know... I've never met a mermaid before either."

**What did you expect?**

"I thought you would strangle me with water tentacles and then eat me," Danny admitted.

The mermaid's shoulders shook again – laughter.  **What's your name?**

"...Danny."

**I'm Kaima. Nice to meet you.**

"Nice to meet you, too." 

Okay, this was seriously surreal.

**Want to be friends?**

"What?"

**Why were you dying?** said Kaima, completely disregarding her previous question.

Danny shrugged. "I was drowning."

**What's that?**

"Drowning. You know, when you go underwater and can't breathe and die?"

**That's weird. But you** **_were_ ** **completely full of water. You didn't get better until I took it out. Can humans not breathe in the water?**

"No, breathing definitely becomes a problem under water." Danny laughed softly. Somehow his nervousness was dissolving. This girl's eyes were bright with curiosity, and instead of seeming dangerous, she was more like an eager little kid who had just made a new friend.

Besides, for all he knew this was all just a very vivid dream, and the best thing to do in dreams was just to go along with them.

He couldn't get used to hearing her words in his head, though. It made him feel like his brain was naked.

**That makes sense. I can't breathe air, and you can. Why were you in the water, then? That was really stupid.**

"It's not like I drowned on purpose," Danny snapped. He thought about why he had been drowning. His classmates had tried to kill him. He was fourteen years old, and his classmates, the guys he'd known since kindergarten, had tried to kill him. Could he be any more pathetic? Danny drew his knees up and hugged them tight.

**Well? You're just staring dramatically at the cave. What happened?**

"I made some guys mad," Danny explained soberly. "So they took me out on a boat and threw me in. They know I can't swim, but they did it anyway." Tears pricked his eyes.

The mermaid, Kaima, also seemed to be on the verge of tears.  **I'm so sorry.**

Danny shook his head. "I just don't understand. Why is everything so messed up? I mean, nobody at school likes me. I'm just a  _ lo-oser _ that everyone is allowed to use as a human punching bag, because they know I can't fight back. I can't talk to my parents about it – they're so wrapped up in themselves that I don't think they could care less about me. I know my sister couldn't care less. I feel like the whole world is against me, and I feel…  _ alone. _ All I want is to graduate so I can get away from it, from all of them. You know? Because sometimes I feel like I'm drowning even when I'm on dry land."

Not everything he said was fair. Tucker was the best friend a guy could ask for. Jazz had his back when he really needed it. His mom was a quiet well of support – when she was around, that is. But those things didn't make up for the rest of it. They couldn't.

Frankly, it felt good to finally spill his guts. He'd not even shared these feelings with Tucker. But how weird was it that he'd ended up sharing them with the creature his parents had spent their whole lives hunting – in a roundabout way, the reason for all of his problems in the first place?

_ It's not her fault, though. This is on you, Fenton… What am I saying? Is any of this even real? _

Kaima watched him sadly. When he was done talking, she said,  **People don't really like me either. But no one has ever tried to kill me. That's awful. Are all humans like that?**

Danny shrugged. "Maybe. Sad to say, but so far you're a whole lot nicer than most of the people I've met. And I was raised to believe that merfolk were monsters."

**You could live here,** said the mermaid seriously, somehow glowing brighter.  **I'd take care of you.**

He snorted, imagining being this mermaid's 'pet human'. "I can't live in a cave for the rest of my life."

**Hmm.** Kaima bit her lip, and Danny could just see the white tips of her… fangs?  **I have an idea. Stay here!**

"Wait, what?"

Kaima pushed off from the wall, spinning around and diving into the pool. Her luminescent tail flicked the air, and in seconds she was gone. The cave plummeted into complete darkness.

"Kaima?" Danny called. His voice echoed in the stale air. He blinked furiously. It was so black that he couldn't tell a difference between when his eyes were open and when they were closed.

Danny's breathing quickened, and his heart pounded in his ears. Water dripped from the ceiling, ghostly 'plinks', and Danny felt like the seawater was going to rush in and crush him. Where was he? Was he deep underwater, or was he in a cliff-side cave that would be submerged at high tide? Maybe he would run out of air before that was even a problem?

The shivers returned. Danny couldn't stop shaking. He was still wet, dressed in nothing more than his sopping swim trunks and tank-top. He rubbed his arms and discovered that his fingertips were numb.

The pool crouched somewhere in the darkness, waiting to swallow him. Danny scooted backward several feet, putting as much distance between him and the water as he could. He moved until his back met the opposite wall or perhaps a stalagmite. He leaned his head back against it and closed his eyes. He hugged his knees close and tried to ignore his chattering teeth.

Exhaustion pulled at him. He buried his face in his arms. Then he curled up on his side in a ball on the floor.

* * *

The third time Danny woke up, he still wasn't in his bed. But he wasn't in the cave, either. He was laying in the sand somewhere; water lapped at his ankles, and the air was warm, a lot warmer than the cave had been. Above him, the moon was bright in the sky, flanked by stars.

Danny groaned and stumbled to his feet. He didn't recognize where he was, but there was a cliff at his back, boats in the water, and he could hear the sound of the highway somewhere nearby. Maybe he was close to Amity Beach. At least he was on dry land again.

He couldn't remember anything after the mermaid left. Just some hazy flashes. She must have come back and brought him to the beach.

Danny felt terrible. His skin was stiff and dry, his clothes damp, everything was coated in sand, and he felt like he was coming down with something. The bruises Dash had given him ached anew.

A light flashed in the distance to the south. Danny squinted at it, just making out a dark shape on the cliffs. "Lighthouse." If that was the Amity lighthouse, then he wasn't too far from home. He began stumbling in that direction.

It turned out that he was just north of Amity Beach and therefore very close to Fentonworks. Small blessings in an otherwise totally messed-up day. Danny was a complete zombie by the time he reached the lab, opened the door with his pass code, rode the elevator up, and dragged himself to his bedroom. The clock by his bed flashed the time – 3:18 A.M.

He flopped face-first down on top of his covers. "Ngh." 

_ Note to self. Whatever you did wrong today, Fenton, whatever you did to get into that mess – figure out what it was, and then don't EVER do it again. _


	5. Chapter 5

_"She had a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach, like when you're swimming and you want to put your feet down on something solid, but the water's deeper than you think and there's nothing there."_

― Julia Gregson

* * *

Danny tried to see how long he could stay in bed. If he didn't move, if he didn't open his eyes, technically he was still asleep.

This worked for a while. Then his leg itched, and he had to scratch it. Scratching his leg made him realize he'd slept the whole night on his stomach, and now his neck was sore. Turning his head caused sand to fall out of his hair, showering his pillow, so that when he put his head back down his face rubbed against grit.

"Darn it," he grumbled. "Okay. I'm up."

It was almost noon. Danny's bedroom was warm; sunlight streamed through the cracks in the blinds, illuminating the dust motes. Danny stretched, listening to all of his joints 'pop'. As he did this, he inventoried his bedroom – the Hubble Telescope posters on the baby-blue walls; the solar system mobile that hung from the ceiling and completed its orbits whenever he turned on the fan; the glow-in-the-dark stars he'd put up as a kid and hadn't gotten around to taking down, and secretly didn't want to. It was all there, just like he remembered.

"I'm really here."

Yesterday was kind of a blur, after his encounter with Dash. Danny remembered seeing a mermaid; maybe someday he could think back on that and laugh. He figured it was some sort of near-death hallucination brought on by the stress of having Jack and Maddie Fenton for parents.

And in the end, he'd washed up on the beach not too far from where Dash dropped him. How long had it taken for his body to get there? For how long was he unconscious? All he knew was that he was lucky to be alive.

Danny rubbed his eyes, feeling the sand stuck in their corners. Every time he moved, sand rained off of him. His bedspread was covered with the stuff.

Out of habit, he grabbed his phone from the bedside table. He only used it to text Tucker and sometimes his parents. He'd even left it at home yesterday, when he realized his swim trunks didn't have pockets. A good thing, too, or it would be sitting at the bottom of the ocean right now.

He had eighteen texts, two missed phone calls, and one voice mail. "What the…?"

_Where r u?_

_did you go home?_

_Danny?_

_not cool, man_

_Still not cool._

_srsly, where ru?_

_you ditched, I get it. Just txt me back._

_Im gonna go to the next level in doomed without you_

_I mean it._

_:(_

_;(_

_:)_

_That was supposed to be another frowny face._

_cause that's how I feel right now._

_If you saw me, I'd be one big frown. And you know Im a smiling kind of guy._

_Okay now I'm freaking out. R u okay?_

_cmon dude, txt me back._

" _Danny – it's me. Where are you? I left the beach, like, five hours ago! When you get this, call me, okay? Look, I'm not even mad that you ditched me… okay, maybe I'm still a little mad. But, whatever. Just let me know you're of the living!"_

And so on.

Buried in all of these was a text from Danny's mom: _Send me a message when you get back from Tucker's house. And don't eat the tuna salad! Love you sweetie! – Mom_

Danny responded to her first, since that was easy. His parents hadn't even realized he was missing, and he preferred it that way. It turned out that 'I'm hanging out with Tucker today' was an excuse with no expiration date.

He called Tucker next. Honestly, he had no idea what he was going to say.

The phone connection clicked, and Tucker's voice demanded: " _Danny? Is that you? What happened? Are you okay?"_

Danny took a deep breath and let it go. "Okay. In that order: yes, it's me; Dash happened; and I'm fine."

His friend hesitated on the other line. " _…Really? 'Cause you kinda don't sound fine._ "

"Do you want to come over? I think I'm the only one home right now. I can tell you in person."

" _I'm on my way!"_

Danny wondered if he had enough time to shower before Tucker got there. He decided he didn't care. He had sand in places sand should never go. Tucker could let himself in; after all, he practically lived there, too.

The house was quiet, like Danny thought it would be. His mom and dad always used Sundays to take the Boat out for a 'patrol' along the coast. Jazz was probably at the library. He vaguely remembered her saying she had plans, for something, somewhere. If he'd been listening –

_Wait, I forgot. I don't care._

In the upstairs bathroom, Danny stripped out of his sandy, salt-stained, stiff, and stinky clothes. He already felt better. But in the mirror, the fluorescent lights made him look paler and skinnier than usual. The bruises on his ribs lingered, today a mottled green and yellow.

"And you wonder why girls don't like you," said Danny to his reflection. "Maybe I should go to the gym?" He flexed his arm muscles and then realized he didn't have any. Yep, the gym was definitely going to the top of his priorities.

Danny turned on the bathtub faucet and let the water run until it was steaming. He tested the water with his fingers, yanking them back when it was so hot it stung. After that, he adjusted the knob to the point where the little blue lines became little red ones, switched to shower mode, and stepped in, pulling the curtains behind him.

The shower was not the refreshing escape Danny had hoped for. He couldn't decide whether the water was too hot or too cold, but it prickled his skin with pins and needles from his head to his feet. Danny closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He'd just rinse the sand off and be done with it.

His old aches ached more with every passing second, and new aches were bubbling up – in his feet, his back, his arms and hands and neck. Especially on his throat, around where the doctors usually massaged to check for swollen lymph nodes. And his skin was so sensitive today. The water scraped through his hair like fork prongs; it ran over his skin with the same softness of sandpaper.

Danny soon found himself short of breath, practically wheezing, and he wondered if he had caught something after all. Thinking about doctors and lymph nodes, he touched his neck.

Danny's eyes shot open.

He screamed.

* * *

Tucker shoved his PDA into a pocket of his cargo pants, where it jangled against other accessories and some loose change. Then he saved his progress on the game he rented last night when it became clear Danny had fallen off of the face of the planet – _Resident Weevil: the Crawling_. It was actually a lot scarier than the title would suggest. Like, the stuff of nightmares. Age 7+? Yeah right. It should have been rated M.

But that wasn't important right now. Nerd assets in order, Tucker called out to his mom, "I'm going to Danny's!"

Her voice came from somewhere in the house: "Be home in time for supper! It's Sloppy Sunday!"

"Roger that!" he called back, smiling. Nothing could stand between Tucker Foley and his mom's extra meaty sloppy joes. He drooled by just thinking about them. But again, that was for later. Right now was Danny time.

It was a short walk to the Fentons', and curiosity, plus a reasonable helping of worry, sped Tucker's steps. When he reached his friend's house, he walked in without knocking and jogged up the stairs. He was nearly to Danny's bedroom when he heard a strangled cry, a thump, and several metal somethings striking the floor.

"Danny?"

Danny wasn't in his bedroom. Tucker could hear the shower running in the bathroom down the hall, so he went towards it. Again, he said, "Danny?" and knocked on the door. "You okay, dude?"

On the other side of the door, Tucker heard the water hitting the bathtub basin, and underneath that, the sound of someone wheezing. Danny's voice croaked, " _Tuck…?_ "

Tucker swallowed, feeling suddenly very shaky. Was this an Emergency with a capital 'E'? Would he have to call 911 and ride in an ambulance to a hospital and wait in a sterile white room while doctors prodded Danny's veins with giant needles and sucked blood out of open wounds with little blood-sucking vacuums and…? Okay, he was getting ahead of himself. _Cool, calming breaths. It's Danny. What's the worst it could be?_

"I'm coming in, okay?" he said, and he opened the door.

Tucker's brain registered the easy details first.

These were the easy details: Danny, half-twisted in the shower curtains, was lying on his back on the bathroom floor, ankles still hooked on the side of the tub. His wide eyes stared up at Tucker, while his hands clutched at his chest and he struggled to breathe.

There were some other details, though, that just weren't lining up with what Tucker's brain expected from reality.

First of all, the skin on Danny's face, chest, and arms was totally colorless – it was as white as white could get and shined with pearly luminescence, except for some patches of human-pink here and there. Then, on his forearms and all over his legs, much of his skin had turned black and scaly. Like snakeskin, it was smooth and gleamed under the bathroom lights. Danny's hair had also become white, like his skin, and was only streaked with some of the old coloring. The tips of his ears were pointed and about an inch longer than they should have been.

The eyes that stared so desperately at Tucker – one was green, and it glowed. In Danny's gasping mouth, his upper and lower canines had grown long and sharp.

And his feet. What was up with them? Who was Tucker kidding – what was up with _any_ of it? But especially his feet. They were black, scaly, elongated, flattened, webbed, semi-transparent, and positively floppy. They looked like frog feet.

Tucker stood in the doorway, opening and closing his mouth like a fish.

"Stop fre… freaking out… and hel… _help me_ ," gasped Danny.

He didn't know what to say, so Tucker didn't say anything. He did close his mouth, though.

Tucker grabbed Danny under his arms and finished pulling him out of the bathtub and the tangle of shower curtains. He shut the bathroom door with his foot, then propped his friend up against it. Maybe if Danny wasn't on his back he would have an easier time breathing…? Next he grabbed Danny's towel and tossed it over those seriously freaky feet. Tucker took another towel and started dabbing the other boy's face and neck dry with it.

"Can I say sorry in advance?" said Tucker, voice quavering. "Because I don't have a clue what I'm supposed to be doing here."

Danny just closed his eyes and nodded. It looked like all of his attention had gone toward breathing. The air rattled in Danny's throat, as if his windpipe was closing.

Patting Danny's neck with the towel, Tucker noticed two gashes on either side of it. His first instinct was to panic – more. Had Danny cut open his throat somehow? Was that why he couldn't breathe? But he realized that the gashes weren't bleeding, and every time Danny took a breath, they opened and closed. They were less like gashes and more like little flaps of skin, really.

"Should… should I call someone? 911? Your parents? Jazz?"

Danny frantically shook his head.

He started to ask something else, when all of a sudden air whooshed into Danny's lungs. Danny eyes fluttered open, and he drew in several more deep breaths with obvious relish and relief.

"Are you okay?" Yes, it was a stupid question to ask at a time like this, but it was the standard question, and honestly, Tucker felt that if he stopped talking, normality would break down entirely.

"I don't know," said Danny. "But I can breathe." He looked like himself, too. The skin around his face was becoming pinker, and both of his eyes were blue again.

"What's going on?"

"I have no idea." Danny grabbed the towel from Tucker – and Tucker noted that his snow-white fingers were kind of webbed, and his nails had turned black and sharp. Danny rubbed his face in the towel and then rubbed it roughly through his hair.

To have something to do, Tucker went and turned off the water. He grabbed the shower curtains and draped them over the curtain rod. Then he sat down on the toilet lid and wrung his hands.

"Has this ever happened before?" he asked. From under the towel, Danny gave him an incredulous look. "What? That's a totally legitimate question!"

Danny wrapped the towel around his shoulders like a blanket. He dropped his head against the door and heaved several more deep breaths. The gashes on his throat were blending back into his skin, which was now definitely more pink than white.

So Tucker pointed out, helpfully, "I think it's going away."

"Really?" Danny brought his now mostly-normal hands up to his face and flipped them over a couple of times. "Oh, thank you!" he told them.

After staring at his hands a while longer, Danny said, "Can we go to my room? In case my family comes home? I don't know how to explain this…"

Tucker eyed Danny's feet dubiously. "Can you walk?"

"What do you mean?"

"Your feet," said Tucker. "Didn't you see?"

"See _what_?" said Danny. He leaned forward and pulled the towel off of his legs. In the last couple of minutes, the frog feet had become human feet again, even if the toes remained webbed and the skin black and scaly. Danny glanced between his feet and Tucker, gulped, and said, "Something tells me they looked a lot worse."

Tucker nodded. "On a scale of one to ten, with one being 'that's how feet should look' and ten being 'totally messed up' – I'd've given them a solid eight point five."

Danny gestured at the appendages in question. "And now?"

Tucker shrugged. "Maybe a five?"

"What would've registered a ten?"

"I'm thinking tentacles. Or maybe a ghostly tail. You know? That point where you can't actually call the feet 'feet' anymore?"

"So I still had feet," said Danny. "I guess it could've been worse."

Tucker stood and offered Danny a hand. He hauled his friend to his feet. "First things first – put some clothes on, dude."

Danny smiled. The expression trembled.

* * *

Fully clothed and back to normal, except for the tips of his hair, which were still maddeningly white, Danny sat in bed, leaning against the headboard and staring at the opposite wall.

Danny thought about what he had seen in the mirror after Tucker helped him to stand. He grimaced and shook the image away. But every time he closed his eyes, every time he blinked, he remembered being in the shower, how his hands had been webbed and clawed, the way his legs were turning black…

He thought he was going to be sick.

Danny glanced at his bare feet one more time to make sure they looked, for lack of a better word, _human_.

"Tuck?" he said.

"Hm?" The techno-geek sat at Danny's computer with dozens of internet tabs open, and the sound of the mouse clicking had filled the otherwise silent room.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm looking on the internet, trying to see if I can find anything."

Danny craned his neck to try to see the screen. "And?"

Tucker swiveled the chair around to face Danny. He took off his red beret and scratched his head. "So far WebMD, Mana, the CDC, the WHO – none of them have _anything_ like this."

"Tucker," said Danny slowly, "I don't think this is a disease."

"Then do you know what's going on?" asked Tucker. His voice jumped an octave. "'Cause I don't know what's going on, and I'd really, really like to know what's going on!"

Danny pulled his knees up and leaned forward, resting his elbows against them. He drew his hands through his hair a few times and then squeezed his head between his arms. "I think… this is going to sound really stupid, but just hear me out, okay? I think I might be turning into a merperson."

Tucker choked, and then he burst out laughing. Danny glared at him. Seeing that Danny wasn't laughing, Tucker stifled the giggles, but not before taking off his glasses and wiping away imaginary tears. "You're serious?"

Danny nodded.

"You're turning into a – _pfft!_ – a mermaid?"

"Technically, a mer _man_. And yes, I'm serious, Tuck."

When the gravity of this settled over Tucker, he grew somber. "What, did one of your parents' experiments do this?"

Danny shook his head. "I don't think so. I guess I need to explain what happened yesterday."

"Oh, right," said Tucker, blinking. "Wow. That feels like such a long time ago."

So, Danny told Tucker the story, everything he could remember from when Kwan and Tyler abducted him from the beach to the moment he woke up on the sand in the early hours of the morning. Tucker was furious when he learned about the stunt on Dash's boat and insisted they tell the police about it. "We could have him thrown in jail!" Danny simply shrugged it off and continued talking. Dash was the last thing on his mind right now.

When Danny finished, Tucker laughed once – a disbelieving puff of air – and said, "If it makes you feel better, I'm not mad about you ditching anymore."

"Gee, thanks," replied Danny sarcastically.

"It's the little things that count, Danny."

"Meanwhile, there's this really big problem: i.e., me turning into a fish."

"What do you think she did to you?"

Danny squeezed his eyes shut, desperately trying to remember what had happened after he passed out in the cave. But his memory of that time was blank. "I honestly have no idea. She told me to wait there, and so I waited, because really, where was I going to go? I remember it was cold, and I thought I was going to freeze to death. And the next thing I know, I'm waking up on the beach."

"Your parents are going to flip," said Tucker.

"Seriously." Danny tried to imagine what his parents' reactions would be. As far as he knew, they had never seen a merperson before. But they were constantly monitoring the ocean and collecting data, running all sorts of experiments. And Vlad Masters, who _had_ actually seen merfolk, was sponsoring them. "Do you think they could fix this?"

"It couldn't hurt to ask. I mean, they're the world's leading mermaid experts, right?"

"I think they might be the world's _only_ mermaid experts. Except for, you know, crazy old sailors with names like Peg-Leg McGee."

"That's another thing," continued Tucker. "Now we know you're parents aren't crazy!"

Danny considered his parents – how they always wore wet suits (his dad even claimed that he would break out in a rash without the comforting feel of neoprene against his skin), stored giant octopus tentacles in the kitchen fridge, and decorated the family home with neon signs and flashing lights throughout the year. "They're still a little crazy," he admitted.

"Well, okay," agreed Tucker, "but not _totally_ crazy. It helps to see the bright side."

"Only you could find a bright side in this situation." Actually, the idea that his parents might be able to fix this already had Danny feeling better. It meant there was hope.

"So, why do you think you turned back to normal?" asked Tucker, replacing his beret.

Danny shrugged. "I don't know. And why didn't I change last night, when I was actually in the ocean?"

"Maybe whatever Mermaid-Chick did took some time to kick in?"

"Maybe," Danny conceded.

"When did you start to feel… different? More fishy, if you catch my meaning."

Danny snorted. "Loud and clear, Tuck." In his mind, he went over everything from the time he woke up to when Tucker came over, trying to pinpoint the exact moment that things became weird. "It was when I was in the shower. I was fine, and then everything started to hurt, and well, you saw the rest."

Tucker frowned thoughtfully. "The shower, huh…? Then I think I might know what triggered it. I'll be right back." The other boy hurried out of the room; Danny could hear his footsteps on the stairs.

A moment later, Tucker returned, carrying a sloshing bowl of water. He sat down on the end of the bed and held it in front of Danny.

"What's that for?"

"Put your hand in the water," instructed Tucker. "Trust me."

Suddenly, Danny was filled with trepidation. He eyed the water suspiciously. "Why?"

"Look, I have a theory. Just put your hand in."

"Okay…" said Danny, and he dipped his hand into the water. At once, his hand began to tingle, and then it was gripped by a dull ache. Surprised, Danny pulled back. He watched as, before his eyes, his hand turned pearly white, and new skin grew between his fingers, while his nails hardened into sharp, black claws. Where the water ran down his arm, the skin changed color. Frantically, Danny rubbed his hand on his bedspread, desperate to get the liquid off.

It was easy to understand what had triggered the change.

"I knew it!" cried Tucker triumphantly. "You know, I bet if you jumped in a pool, you'd change all the way. You probably weren't in the water long enough earlier."

"To what? Grow a tail? Hopefully I won't ever find out." Mostly dry now, Danny's hand was reverting to normal. It shook, but Danny realized that the rest of his body was shaking, too.

"You have to admit, this is kind of awesome," said Tucker.

"For you, maybe. You're not the one turning into a monster." More softly, Danny remarked, "Wow. After being called a 'freaky Fenton' my whole life, I never thought… Geez." He buried his face in his arms. "I just wanted to have a normal high school life. Was that so much to ask?"

Tucker put the bowl of water on the bedside table and then placed a hand on Danny's shoulder. He offered his friend a sympathetic, somewhat guilty smile. "Sorry. I didn't mean… I bet this is really scary for you."

"Yeah, it is," Danny agreed.

"Talk to your parents, okay? I'm sure they can figure out a way to reverse this."

Danny nodded. They had to. Because what else could he possibly do?

His parents wouldn't be home until that evening, so Tucker decided they should take Danny's mind off of the problem with a healthy serving of mindless video games. It was easy to forget about everything when cutting through hordes of zombies in a first-person-shooter. Danny realized, too, how grateful he was that Tucker had come over when he did. He didn't think he could have handled this alone, not after everything that had happened yesterday. It was too much.

Jazz came home a few hours into their diversionary tactics. She walked into Danny's room without knocking and stood there with her hands on her hips. "Do either of you want to tell me why the bathroom's been destroyed?"

Danny and Tucker looked at each other and then at Jazz.

"No clue."

"Couldn't say."

"Sorry."

"Why don't you ask Mom?"

The red-head rolled her eyes and threw up her hands in exasperation before leaving the room. Now that the door was open, they could hear her stomping down the stairs into the kitchen. A few seconds later, she yelped, and the refrigerator door slammed closed.

Tucker frowned worriedly. "Should we check on her?"

Danny shook his head and unpaused their game. "Nah. I think she just found the tuna salad."

"Ah." Their fingers resumed their frantic operations.

* * *

Too soon, Tucker's mom was calling him and asking him to come home for dinner. Tucker gripped Danny's shoulder firmly as he stood to leave.

"Let me know how it goes with your parents, yeah?"

"Sure."

Danny tried to play the game for a while longer, but without Tucker to keep him company, all of the panic he had stifled before was rising back to the surface. A zombie killed his character with a bite to the jugular, and at that point Danny gave up. After that, he paced his room for a few minutes and then went downstairs to the kitchen. Now sitting at the table, he stared at the clock and wondered what he was going to tell them.

 _Mom, Dad – you know how you study merpeople? Well, it just so happens I'm turning into one. You wouldn't happen to have an antibiotic for this, would you?_ Maybe they had seen this kind of thing before. It could have happened to someone else. Danny always zoned out when they talked about their research, so who knows what kind of vital information he might have missed?

A little after six, the red light above the elevator turned on. They were back. Danny went completely numb; his mouth was dry. This was it.

He gulped.

The metal doors slid apart, opening on Maddie and Jack Fenton mid-conversation.

"Just think about it, Mads! If we could find their nest-"

"- our research would advance by leaps and bounds! Can you imagine?"

"Uh, Mom?" Danny blurted. "Dad? Can I talk to you?"

Jack noticed his son at the table and practically jumped across the room. He picked Danny up by the shoulders and squeezed him tightly in a hug. "Danny-boy! You should have been there!"

Danny squirmed out of his dad's hold, and bewildered, studied the beaming faces of his parents. "What's going on?"

Maddie explained: "Our buoys recorded activity about two miles up the coast from here. It happened early this morning – we think a merperson must have come close to shore. We had two spikes of the same chemical-signature in that area, which must have been from when it approached and when it left again. So, we took the MAC out there this morning-"

"AND WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT?" shouted Jack. "The wily guy came back! HAH!"

"It… it did?" said Danny, knowing exactly which merperson had gotten so close to the shore that morning. But why had she returned? Was she looking for him? "What, uh, what did you do?"

"We chased it! We followed that baby for three miles, right up until it shook us off its tail. But let me tell you, as soon as we get the Fenton Siren Speeder up and running, no amount of ocean will stand between us and those feisty, fishy fiends." Delighted at the tongue-twister, Jack repeated it a few more times. Badly.

Danny swallowed. "What will you do if you, you know, capture one?"

"What _wouldn't_ we do?" said Jack.

Maddie pulled off her turquoise hood, revealing her auburn hair and a childlike grin. "We've never had access to a live specimen before, Danny. If we captured one, we'd be able to take samples, study its reactions to stimuli, and eventually, even dissect it. We could learn everything there is to know about the merperson anatomy!"

Her son gaped. "You'd _dissect_ it?"

"Abso-tootin-lutely," said Jack, and he pulled his wife into his arms, planting a kiss on her lips, mindless of their child standing not three feet away. Danny was far too preoccupied to begin feeling grossed out, though.

Maddie giggled and pushed Jack away from her. "Was there something you wanted to talk to us about, Danny?"

He shook his head, feeling a bit sick to his stomach. "Nope. Nothing."

"You look a little pale," she commented, frowning. "Are you okay?"

Maddie removed one of her gloves and reached out to feel Danny's forehead, but he jerked away from her touch. "I'm fine! "

"Well, if you say so… I'm making spaghetti for dinner. I'll let you know when it's ready."

"Fine." Stiffly, Danny walked out of the kitchen. He went back to his bed and lay there, staring at the ceiling, until his mom called him back down to the kitchen.

Through dinner, Jack and Maddie gushed over the events of their day, easily throwing around words like 'specimen' and 'exterminate'. Danny lost his appetite, and he did little more than push meatballs across his plate and twirl spaghetti noodles around his fork, even though he hadn't eaten anything since lunch the day before.

At one point, he reached for his lemonade, only to yank his hand back when the increasingly-familiar tingles began. His palm and fingers had turned white, and they glistened with water droplets. The condensation on his glass. Even that much water would affect him?

When he noticed Jazz giving him a funny look, Danny quickly hid his hand under the table. He covered his unease by glowering at her.

A few minutes later, he excused himself from the table. His parents' excited voices followed him up the stairs, and he began to wonder, for the first time seriously, what his parents would do if they knew what had happened to him.

It was the first time in his life he felt afraid of his parents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Weeee~ Long chapter! And, Danny's transformation! Kind of. He still has a little ways to go...
> 
> For those of you who thought it would be pretty and magical, I apologize. Instead, it's kind of the opposite - painful and terrifying. Because of the Fentons studying merpeople on such a scientific level, I couldn't help but imagine the physical implications of the transformation. And this is the result.


	6. Chapter 6

" _What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams."_

– Werner Herzog

* * *

Danny wondered how historical events got their names. Did the old geezers who wrote the textbooks figure it out, or was it the people back then? Like, did they go down to the pub a few days after something happened, and for the sake of being able to reference it, let some drunk dude coin a clever phrase to use?

Case in point: the War of Jenkins's Ear.

It was a good name, but imagine being that guy, Jenkins. You'd go down in history as the guy who lost an ear, complained about it, and started a nine-year war. Nothing else you did would even matter. You'd be 'that ear guy' forever.

Whose fault was that?

And why was Danny worrying about this during his history class, when he actually couldn't care less about the war in question?

He was thinking about his own destiny – the day when his secret disfigurement was blown. Once discovered, he imagined that keeping something like a teenage boy who would turn into a merperson in a rainstorm secret would be pretty difficult. He would turn biology and mythology and several other –ologies on their heads. Then, fifty years down the line, the students at Neptune High would be sitting in a class like this, reading about the first "fish boy", and there'd be a name for him, other than "Danny Fenton". It might very well be "the Fish Boy".

And like Jenkins, a sea captain – how cool was that? Okay, so Danny, who hated the sea and all of its accoutrements, didn't really think it was cool, but surely someone would – like Jenkins, say Danny did something else with his life before the freakiness came to the surface. He could be an astronaut. Heck, he could be the first person to set foot on Mars! If word got out about the scaly, glowing side of him, that'd be it for him in the history books. Mars would be a footnote.

It was only second period on Monday, and Danny was ready to throw in the towel.

When he woke up that morning, his first thought had been, _Let it be a dream_. He had rushed to the bathroom and stuck a hand under the faucet. This quickly proved it was, unfortunately, not a dream. Like the day before, the hand tingled and then ached upon contact with the water, and wherever the liquid touched became milky-white; his fingers became webbed; his nails turned into claws.

Danny resisted throwing up. He dried his hand on a towel and then used a hair-dryer to speed up the process. The mirror helpfully reminded him that he had not bathed properly since his little excursion in the ocean two days earlier. He would have to wear an extra layer of deodorant and figure out something better in the future. How to shower without water. Right.

His parents had already taken the MAC out by the time he went down for breakfast, probably eager to catch another merperson trespassing on the coast. Jazz, the overachiever, had already left for school. No one was around to witness Danny's paranoia that morning, the way he checked everything for condensation before he grabbed it and chose to eat toast that morning because toast was a very, very dry food and required nothing out of the frosty refrigerator. Looking at the sink reminded him of how it was his week to wash dishes. Yet another thing to worry about. How was he going to weasel out of that? Bribe Jazz?

He left the house trying not to think about these things.

Then, like always, he met Tucker on the way to school.

"Hey, Danny," the other boy greeted meekly, eyes flicking up and down over his friend's appearance. "You never called last night. How'd it go with your parents?"

Danny scowled at the ground and continued walking towards school. "It didn't. I didn't tell them."

"What? Why not?"

"Hmm, let's see. Maybe it's because they were too busy talking about how they'd 'dissect', 'dismember', and 'rip limb from limb' the first merperson they got their hands on for me to say anything."

Tucker looked disgusted. "That's horrible. But still, you're their son. They wouldn't do that kind of stuff to you."

Danny shook his head. "You don't know them like I do. They see merpeople as monsters. They're obsessed with getting revenge on them for what happened twenty years ago. They want to exterminate the whole species. And you know, I don't think I _would_ be their son anymore…I think I'd already be dead in their eyes, just another human casualty."

"Did you get any sleep last night? 'Cause what you're saying sounds like the kind of thing you would have to spend a whole night coming up with."

"I'm not kidding, Tucker! Or, think about this: what if I told them, and they _can't_ fix me? Even if they didn't try to kill me, they'd never look at me the same way again. I don't want that."

"So just prove to them that merpeople aren't monsters."

"That would be really hard, especially because I don't believe it myself."

At Tucker's surprised expression, Danny explained, "They capsized my parents' boat and _ate_ the people on board. I thought Kaima was okay when I met her, but then she did _this._ " He gestured at his body. "I don't even know why! When I changed yesterday… it felt wrong. Tuck, I _feel_ like a monster."

Tucker had no response to that. They finished walking to school shrouded in uncomfortable silence.

Between the front doors of Neptune High and his locker, Danny kept expecting for the eyes of the student body to lock onto him. He had to constantly remind himself that, for now at least, he looked human. But even though they didn't notice him, Danny noticed them perfectly – the kid slurping noisily at the water fountain; the basketball players dripping sweat after morning practice and squirting Gatorade through the air from their bottles to their mouths; the janitor mopping the floor. A group of girls walked out of the bathroom, and through the open door Danny could hear the sound of toilets and faucets running.

It was like he had become hypersensitive to liquids. Had there always been water _everywhere_ at school?

At Tucker's locker, Danny pressed his back against the metal doors and watched the pandemonium unfolding around him. "Tuck," he said. "Does anything strike you as wrong here?"

Tucker pulled his head out of his locker and looked around, finally shrugging. "Pretty standard high school hallway."

"Really?" This was normal?

Tucker frowned at him. "You okay, man?"

Danny pinched the bridge of his nose. _Calm down. You're losing it._ "It's nothing. I'm fine."

Danny wished he could say the merperson problem was his _only_ problem that day, but no, that would've been too easy.

There was also Dash. Despite his suspension having supposed to have lasted two more weeks, he was back at school that morning. Danny kept waiting for a teacher, or the principal, or a cop (preferably a cop) to haul the big blond away, but it soon became clear that Dash was there to stay.

Upon crossing paths on the way to first period English, they froze. Danny and Dash both looked surprised to see the other at school; Danny, because he had thought Dash was suspended; Dash, because he had thought Danny was dead. Danny would have thought the way Dash's face lost all color was funny – the boy looked positively sick – if he hadn't been thinking several other things, such as:

_This jerk tried to kill me._

_He had me thrown in the ocean, and now I'm turning into a freak. So really, this is all Dash's fault._

_I can't believe he seriously tried to_ kill _me. Who_ does _that?_

There was no telling how long they would have stood there like statues, goggling at each other, had Kwan not broken the moment by picking Danny up, hugging him tightly, and exclaiming, "Thank god!" He swung Danny back and forth a few times and promptly began to cry into the top of the smaller boy's head.

"Let go of me!" said Danny, thinking only about how Kwan's tears were made of water.

Obediently, Kwan replaced Danny on his feet. He did not lift his hands from Danny's shoulders, and he did not stop crying. He just smiled a very wet smile. "Are… are you okay, Fenton?"

Danny knocked the football player's arms away. "I'm fine. No thanks to you."

A small crowd had started to gather, circling around the drama unfolding. Dash grabbed Kwan's arm and pulled him back. "We're not doing this here."

"Good," said Danny.

"But we are doing it," said Dash, pointing an accusatory finger. "After school, under the bleachers. Be there. C'mon, Kwan." The blond's expression was practically livid as he dragged his friend to class.

Tucker appeared again at Danny's side. Together, dumbfounded, they stared after the retreating jocks.

"What's he so angry about?" said Tucker.

"He's probably miffed that he didn't kill me as well as he thought."

"You're not going to meet him after school… are you?"

"So he can try again?" Danny shook his head. "No way."

They reached Lancer's class and walked to their seats in the back, Dash's venomous glare following them. After sitting down, Danny whispered, "What is he even doing here? He's supposed to be suspended. Right? Or am I the only one who remembers that happening?"

Tucker shrugged. "Beats me."

"You know his dad's a lawyer," said Samantha Manson. Her face was obscured by a book. She didn't look up as she addressed them. "She's a dubious source at the best of times, but according to _Paulina_ , Dash's dad bribed the school into suspending his suspension. He even got to try out for the football team this morning."

"Ah," sighed Tucker. "The power of dirty money."

"Of course," said Danny, clenching his fists in front of him. "Because nothing bad _ever_ happens to the great Dash Baxter."

"Except for you breaking his nose," said Tucker. "That will never stop being funny."

"True," agreed Samantha. "That _was_ pretty humiliating."

"No one asked you," growled Danny.

The popular girl raised her hands, the book dangling from her fingers, and rolled her eyes. "Geez, forgive me for opening my mouth." Scowling, she replaced the book in front of her face to continue reading.

The bell rang, and Mr. Lancer started class by asking them to turn in their homework. Danny realized he had totally forgotten their assignment and dropped his face onto his desk, groaning. So much for repaying Lancer by being a 'model student'. It was only their second week and already he was missing assignments. _Good going, Fenton_.

For the next few classes, Danny tried his best to concentrate on the teachers' lectures, but between feeling exhausted and his traitorous mind wandering back to the shower incident, he retained basically zero that day. Well, except for Jenkins losing his ear, in a war against someone, during some year… sometime in the past.

The sluggish day finally came to an end. Danny was happy to get out of the school and all of the water-abusive people who had surrounded him there. As Danny and Tucker started for home, Tucker said, "How mad do you think Dash will be when you don't show up?"

He'd forgotten all about that. "On a scale of one to ten?" said Danny. "How about, 'I don't care'? I have enough problems without having to worry about Dash."

* * *

It turned out that Dash was pretty mad when Danny didn't appear behind the bleachers.

Tuesday morning, before Danny even got inside the building, Dash grabbed him from the crowd and dragged him to the bleachers by the football field. Tucker followed, protesting loudly and making a scene until one of Dash's murderous looks convinced him that shutting up was also a good option.

Danny was tossed to the ground and had to pick himself up, noting that one of his elbows now sported a stinging grass burn. Dash towered over him, flanked by Tyler and a somewhat apologetic-looking Kwan.

"What part of 'be here' didn't you understand, Fenturd?"

"Uh, the part where I didn't say I would?"

"It wasn't an invitation," said the blond. Then he whirled on Tucker. "Get out of here, Foley."

"He knows everything," said Danny.

That seemed to be the wrong thing to say. Dash's face burned bright red. "So you _did_ squeal on us!"

"No," said Danny slowly. "I told _Tucker_."

Dash grabbed Tucker by the front of his shirt. "And who did you tell, huh, techno-freak?"

"No one!" exclaimed Tucker, waving his hands as a white flag.

"You expect me to believe you?"

"Listen, Dash!" said Danny. His knees were shaking, and he had the distinct feeling that if he didn't handle this exactly right, the whole situation would deteriorate. "No one else knows. It's more than you deserve, but I didn't 'squeal' on you."

Dash released Tucker and stared between the two smaller boys with hard, suspicious eyes. "Really?"

"Really," said Danny. "Don't you think something would have happened to you by now if I had?"

"I guess…"

"I mean, you tried to kill me!" said Danny, and again he was hit by a wave of shame. He still couldn't believe he had gotten into that situation in the first place. If he wasn't so weak… Voice trembling, he continued, "That isn't something you can bribe your way out of!"

"We weren't trying to kill you!" said Kwan suddenly. When Dash frowned at him, he averted his eyes. "I mean, it was just a joke."

"Some joke," said Tucker, smoothing the front of his shirt. "He almost drowned."

"We, we had a lifesaver and everything…" Kwan's voice was small.

Danny scowled at the lot of them, realizing now why he had been brought out here. They had been scared stiff when their petty revenge prank failed and they thought they had murdered him. Now they were scared stiff that he was going to tell on them.

"You guys are stupid," he said. "You're lucky I didn't die. And you're lucky I didn't tell anyone. I'm not going to, either." At this, all of the football players seemed to wilt with relief. "But I want you to leave me alone."

"You won't tell anyone?" asked Dash. He looked torn between crying and punching something.

"As long as you _stay away from me_ … no, I won't."

"Fine. Whatever you want. But, you'd better keep your mouth shut."

Danny stared into each of their faces. They _looked_ sincere, at least for now. "I gotta get to class. Come on, Tuck."

When they had rounded the corner of the school building and were out of sight of the bleachers, Danny collapsed against the wall.

"You owned them!" cried Tucker.

It was shaky, but Danny managed to pull off a smile. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did."

He just wished he could solve everything else so easily.

First off, Jazz refused the bribe to switch with him on washing the dishes. He had offered to take laundry from her, but she told him it was Boat-cleaning duty or nothing. So, that was out. Therefore he found his mom's pair of bright purple rubber gloves – the kind that reached up to his elbows when he put them on – and approached the sink like approaching a starved tiger. Jazz, who was sitting at the kitchen table doing homework, stared incredulously at him, increasingly so as every time a drop of water splashed against his face, he would yelp while scrubbing the afflicted spot against his shoulder.

Then Tuesday night, before retreating to the lab, his mom had leaned in to kiss him 'goodnight' on the cheek. When she did, her nose had crinkled, and she informed him he was a little "ripe". If he was putting his mom off, she who had smelled every bad smell a boy could make in his lifetime, it was time to find a solution to his bathing problem.

So he had waited until Jazz was asleep and his parents secured in their work. Then he went into the bathroom and locked the door. He had brought with him several towels, and a sponge and bucket from the cleaning closet.

Danny leaned against the counter; his pale face gazed back at him from the mirror.

"Okay," he told himself. "First problem – gills. Gills equal not breathing. Not breathing equals death. And death is bad. So let's try to avoid that." After removing his clothes, he wrapped one of the towels around his neck, so tightly it almost gagged him.

Next he placed the bucket in the bathtub and let a thin stream of hot water begin to fill it. He was hesitant to run very much water, knowing just how loudly the upstairs pipes groaned. If this worked, he didn't want his family to wonder why he was always running the bath in the middle of the night.

He returned to the sink with his bottle of shampoo and braced himself before turning on the water, closing his eyes, and dunking his head under the faucet. The pin-and-needle feeling from Sunday returned across his scalp. His ears and mouth especially ached, and when he combed his fingers through his hair, he felt his hands similarly changing. Danny reached for the bottle of shampoo, trying to ignore the 'click' of his fingertips against the plastic. The claws were a little harder to ignore while scrubbing the shampoo through his hair; he wasn't careful enough at the first and scratched himself a few times.

Finally, he rinsed his hair, splashed enough water across his face that he could say he'd washed it, and scrubbed everything thoroughly with another towel he'd placed nearby. Only then did he straighten and open his eyes.

Bright green eyes looked back at him. The bathroom was pretty bright already, but Danny was sure that his eyes were bright enough to glow in the dark, just like Kaima's had. His hair, pure white, spiked out in all directions, obscuring the pointed ears beneath them. While his skin was quickly returning to normal, it was still white and pearly around his hairline. Danny bared his teeth at the mirror and saw that, while not the veritable _fangs_ he'd had Sunday, his upper and lower canines were a bit longer and pointier than usual.

He sighed. He was not sure he could ever get used to this.

After brushing out his hair, Danny went to the bathtub and essentially gave himself a sponge bath. It took a long time, but by the end he smelled more like soap than sweat, sand, and sea scum, so he was going to count it as a victory.

Danny had also known rain would be a problem. He simply hadn't expected it to be a problem so soon.

Thursday, dark billowing storm clouds had rolled across the sky. Danny woke up to a warning text from Tucker and then looked out his bedroom window to confirm it.

Danny made it to school before the watery hell broke loose, but from about nine o'clock in the morning, it rained steadily. Danny's mood was as dark as the sky. Around noon, Danny threw himself onto the bench at his and Tucker's lunch table. He immediately ran his fingers through his hair and cradled his face in his hands.

"Dude, are you okay?"

Danny shook his head without looking up. "I can't live like this, Tuck."

Tucker raised one eyebrow curiously but didn't say anything, knowing his friend would continue soon enough. He was not disappointed –

"I mean, first off, I can't even take a shower like a normal person. I've been washing my hair in the sink, at like, two in the morning so my family won't see me turn all freaky. I can't even wash my hands."

"You haven't been washing your hands? Dude, that's disgusting!"

Danny glared. He slipped a small bottle out of his pocket and slammed it onto the table. "I've been using hand sanitizer. But still. It's _annoying_ , and I'm starting to really hate the smell of rubbing alcohol. I've been wearing rubber gloves to wash the dishes, too, and between the sanitizer and gloves, Jazz is convinced that I've got some cleaning disorder.

"And, just – things I never even thought of before! Like, I can't pick up a drink if it's sweating, because it has _water_ condensed on it. I'm scared stiff all the time that someone is going to splash me. And now… now it's raining! I've been sitting here all morning dreading walking home. What am I supposed to do, Tuck? I'm a nervous wreck!"

Tucker slurped loudly at his drink. "I'll say."

"If there was a prize for _least_ helpful comments, it would go to you."

The techno-geek raised his hands defensively. "Hey! What do you want me to say? That you should hunt down the merchick who did this to you and make her change you back?"

Danny gaped at his friend. "Wait. You think I could do that?"

"Do what?"

"Go find her and make her change me back! If she did this to me, she should know how to make it go away." He couldn't believe he hadn't thought of it sooner.

Tucker frowned pensively. "I was kind of joking, dude. I mean, yeah, we know she did this to you… but who's to say she would want to change you back? We don't even know why she did this in the first place."

Danny frowned at the table, crumpling slightly. "It's hard to say, but… I think she thought she was helping me. I remember her saying I should stay there with her. You know, in the ocean?"

"'Cause that's where the mermaids live. Got it."

"I told her I couldn't because I was human, so I needed to go home. And she said something about 'having an idea'."

"So you _knew_ she was going to do this?" asked Tucker in disbelief.

"No!" Danny ran another hand through his hair, frustrated. His black locks stuck out from his head in several directions, accenting his paler-than-usual skin and the purple bruises under his eyes. "I was having a hard time staying awake just then, and to be honest, I thought I was dreaming. I didn't even remember her saying that until recently. Who knows, I still might be making it up."

He laid his hands open on the table, curling and uncurling his fingers, imagining them turning webbed, clawed, and milky. He shivered. "I know she did this to me. And she saved my life before, so I know she doesn't want to hurt me. I think she can help."

"You really want to do this?" said Tucker.

"No. But what choice do I have?"

"You could still try talking to your parents."

" _No_ , Tucker. They're mer _hunters_. They can't help me."

"If you say so."

"I do," replied Danny, expression hard.

Tucker took a deep breath and nodded. "Okay. When do you want to do this?"

Danny's eyes widened at finally having Tucker's support. "As soon as possible. This weekend. If I go Saturday morning, that will give me a couple of days to find her."

"A couple of _days_? You think it will take that long?"

"The ocean's a big place."

* * *

That afternoon, Danny and Tucker stood under the overhang of the front steps of Neptune High. The sound of the rainstorm was a steady ' _shhhhhh_ ' on all sides. Their classmates, eager to leave school no matter what the conditions of the outside world, bumped into them as they streamed from the building.

Danny stared at the curtain of rain, too petrified to move. His friend extracted his PDA from his pant pockets and consulted a weather app. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, dude, but we've got a ninety percent chance of rain until two o'clock this morning."

"I can wait."

The techno-geek rolled his eyes. "Sure you can. Look, you've got a rain coat, rain boots, a rain hat, a poncho with a freakin' hood, _and_ an umbrella. Survey says, you're _not_ going to get wet, although you do look ridiculous."

Danny just swallowed. Tucker, exasperated, grabbed the other boy's umbrella, opened it, put it back in Danny's hand, and pushed him out from under the safety of the overhang. He stumbled down the steps, and for a few seconds Danny stood at the bottom, unmoving in the middle of the rain, eyes squeezed shut and limbs pulled close to his body.

"And," said Tucker, "against no odds at all, you're completely fine!"

Danny opened one eye, then the other. He observed the ropes of water draining off the points of his umbrella and realized he didn't feel a single ache or tingle. "I'm okay?"

"You're okay. Now can we please go home already?"

The walk home was slow and quiet. Danny was preoccupied with skirting every puddle they came across and flinched every time a car flung water from the road. Tucker put himself on the inside of the sidewalk, between Danny and the street, trying to help his friend out or at least get him to stop acting so neurotic. Tucker swore, any second now the kid's eye was going to start twitching.

…and yep, there was the twitch. Well, at least the wind wasn't blowing.

Finally, they came to the last crosswalk between them and Fentonworks. The neon sign rose in the near distance, a beacon of hope for Danny in the otherwise dreary light of the afternoon. Tucker had agreed to accompany Danny all the way to the front door, "just in case".

They waited at the corner. Danny begged the crossing sign with his eyes to change from red to green. A huge lake stretched across the intersection, mocking him, but so far most of the cars had taken it slowly; instead of splashing through, they crossed the water with gentle ripples.

But then Danny heard it. _Splish. Splish. Splish._ A huge, bright yellow Hummer decked out with thick custom tires, each three feet tall, had rounded a corner and was now approaching them at full speed. Every puddle it hit splayed out in all directions in great, splashy arcs.

Danny felt his blood turn cold. "Tuck," he stated. Then it was upon them.

The Hummer hit the lake, and the gutter water flew towards them like a tsunami wave. Danny squeezed his eyes shut and shielded his face with his arms, preparing for the worst.

Except, it never came. He didn't get drenched. Next to him, either awed or freaked out, Tucker said, "Danny…"

Danny opened his eyes. Suspended in the air in front of them, like a wall of muddy glass, was the wave of rainwater. It glimmered, illuminated from behind by the red glow of the crossing signal. Nearby raindrops hung frozen in midair around it.

"Are you doing that?" said Tucker.

"I – I don't know." Danny lowered his arms, and at once the water fell straight to the ground, washing over their feet and back into the road.

The crossing sign clicked and turned green.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Danny sets his weekend plan in motion.


	7. Chapter 7

" _There's nothing wrong with enjoying looking at the surface of the ocean itself, except that when you finally see what goes on underwater, you realize that you've been missing the whole point of the ocean. Staying on the surface all the time is like going to the circus and staring at the outside of the tent."_

― Dave Barry

* * *

"Think fast!"

"If you throw your drink on me one more time, Tucker, I swear I will turn into a merman and eat you."

The tech-enthusiast laughed this off. "Nah, you'd suffocate before you got close. Besides, I've got these bad boys to help me run away," he said, raising his feet in the air and wiggling his toes.

"I just need my head to change, Tuck. I just need my head."

Tucker gulped, and his voice jumped an octave. "You don't want to eat me. I'm bad for your health, chock full of trans fat and bacon grease."

They were at Tucker's house that Friday evening. To Tucker's parents, their story was that Danny would be going home Saturday morning; to Danny's parents, he would be coming home Sunday night.

"I'm kidding," Danny deadpanned. He was lying sprawled on the top of Tucker's bed, glowering at the ceiling. His hair was damp in places, slightly sticky, and streaked with white, and he had a feeling his eyes were glowing, too. Tucker's idea had been that the only way to trigger Danny's newfound 'power' was to startle it out of him. So far, that was not working. "But seriously, stop."

Tucker sat in a rolling chair at his desk, sucking on a Mega Nasty Drink, or what was left of it. Behind him were two flat-screen monitors that he had spent last year's allowance, birthday money, and Christmas money on buying. Mostly the two screens were for gaming; for example, he could have Doom open and running on one while being able to reference user guides, player forums, and cheats on the other. Right now, the screens were displaying various topographical maps of the ocean around Amity Beach.

"Okay, I'll lay off," said Tucker. He eyed his cup. "Anyway, I'm almost out of soda. At least until the ice melts, and then we're back in business!"

" _Tucker_."

"I mean, we would be, if we were still doing that…Ahem."

"Shutting up now?"

"Shutting up now." Tucker swiveled back to face the screens. "So, if you were a mermaid nest, where would you be?"

"If it were that easy, don't you think my parents would have found it by now? They've only been looking for, I don't know, the last _twenty years_."

"Someone's grumpy today," said Tucker. Danny huffed. "The thing is, you were right about the ocean being a big place. Not only does it take up a massive lateral area, it's also three-dimensional. It's like having mountains, plains, ravines, and the whole sky as a playing field. What's your plan?"

Danny shrugged. "I figured I'd start where she left me on the beach Saturday night. I'll temporarily disable my parents' buoys and then…"

Tucker sucked at the very last of his drink, the soda gurgling noisily through the straw. "Yeah?"

"I guess I have to…" He trailed off, mumbling something incoherent.

"You have to…?"

"You know." Danny sat up and grabbed a duffle bag from the floor. He had to strain to lift it onto the bed. Unzipping it, he pulled out such things as a black neoprene wetsuit and a scuba mask. At the bottom of the bag was the diving cylinder, comprising much of the weight of the bag. "I smuggled these out of the Boat earlier. Technically they're mine, but I've never used them before…"

"Uh, is scuba diving really something you can just pick up?"

Danny offered some more noncommittal mumbling.

"What am I saying? You're a _merman_. Why do you need scuba gear?"

"I just do, okay?" said Danny, and he started stuffing the equipment back into the bag. "Anyway, after I leave, you've got to cover for me. I'm going to leave my phone with you. If my mom texts or something, pretend you're me."

"And after you get in the water, then what will you do?"

Danny shrugged again. "I'll look around, I guess." He thought back to Sunday, when his parents had detected the trespassing merperson. "I think she was looking for me. Maybe I won't even need to find her. Maybe she'll find me."

Tucker looked dubious. "Let me get this straight. This is your plan: You hang out in the ocean for a couple of days with one tank of air, a scuba suit you don't know how to use, and no food, by the way, hoping this chick will find you. Saying you survive that, then what? How are you supposed to get past the buoys and get back here without your parents catching you?"

"Quickly."

"Dude, you can't even swim."

"I'll manage. Besides, if this works, the buoys won't detect me at all."

"And if it doesn't work?" Danny said nothing. Tucker continued, "You know, if you dumped the wetsuit, I bet you could swim _really_ well."

"I'm _not_ dumping the wetsuit."

They stared at each other across the room, neither willing to budge on their opinions.

"Has anyone ever told you you're really stubborn?"

"It comes with being a Fenton," said Danny, smiling.

Tucker rolled his eyes. "Yeah, that wasn't a compliment, Danny. Come on, man. For someone as scared of meeting a watery grave as you, won't you just stop and think this through? I get that you don't want to turn into your fish form; I totally get that. But a tank of air won't last you two days, and I've heard all kinds of horror stories about decompression sickness and collapsing lungs when people don't use their scuba gear correctly. There's a reason they have classes on that stuff.

"In this case, having gills is a pro. And you just need your head to change, right? So wear your wetsuit, ditch the hood, and use some Fenton Tape to seal up the neckline so the rest of your body doesn't get wet. And voila, you're your own oxygen tank."

Danny blinked at his friend. "That's… a really good idea."

The other boy tugged at some imaginary suspender straps and said, proudly, "I've been known to have them now and then. As for where to look…" He swiveled his chair around and pointed at the maps on his computers. "There are a lot of underwater hills and valleys here, running up and down the coast for miles. The merpeople won't be out in the open, because someone would have found them already if they were. So, I'm thinking these areas will be your best bet. If you swim straight out from the coast, you should hit them eventually."

"I'm impressed," said Danny, nodding appreciatively. Already, the task he'd given himself seemed less daunting.

Tucker beamed. "That's the power of the Internet. But, I'm still not entirely convinced that your plan is a good one."

"Maybe not, but it's the only one I've got."

* * *

They snuck out of the Foley residence at five o'clock the next morning, Danny wearing most of his wetsuit and having stashed the rest of the equipment in Tucker's closet to pick up later. It was a short walk from there to Fentonworks, although they were forced to climb the long, rickety wooden staircase down the cliff to the beach instead of taking the usual elevator.

Danny was fairly confident the lab would be empty. Despite being a firm believer in 'the early merhunter catches the fishman', unless it was Fenton Family Boating Day, Jack Fenton was also a firm believer in sleeping in on weekends. There was no way he'd be in the lab yet, not when it was still dark outside and thus technically night. Danny's mom, meanwhile, rarely worked in the lab solo, because it would upset her husband to feel left out.

His suspicion was confirmed when Danny entered his key code and was allowed into a dark and empty lab. "Thank you, lifelong habits," he whispered, walking inside.

Lights flickered on as motion detectors registered Danny and Tucker. Danny quickly bypassed the many counters strewn with half-constructed weapons, the aquariums filled with local marine life, the big holding tank that sat empty in the middle of the room, and the scaffolding that surrounded the nearly-completed Siren Speeder, to the computers lined up in the far corner. Danny began typing passwords and navigating a certain one of the machines.

"You know how to do this?" whispered Tucker, staring around at the contents of the room. The Fentonworks Lab was not a place guests, even Tucker, were allowed to visit.

"I've watched my folks do it enough times, I should."

"This is some serious tech," Tucker observed. He would have whistled had they not been going for stealth just then.

"Compliments of DALV Corp," said Danny dryly. He tapped a few more keys, hit enter, and said, "Got it. I've scheduled the buoys for some 'routine maintenance'. They'll be out of commission for the next few hours, at least. Let's go."

On the way back to the door, Danny dug a roll of black Fenton Waterproof Tape out of a supply cabinet. He'd only ever used the stuff for school science projects in the past, but he knew it was really durable.

He almost had to push Tucker out of the lab. "You have to bring me back in here, Danny," the techno-geek insisted. "This stuff is incredible."

"Fine, whatever. Can we move it now? Kind of on a tight schedule here."

Safely on the beach again, they struck out for the north. After walking for about half an hour, Danny decided they had reached the right spot – or were close enough, anyway. In the east, the horizon was brightening, warm pink against the star speckled blue night. The ocean was a great, shadowy behemoth beneath it, licking its tongue against the sand.

Danny flung his backpack onto the sand and sat down next to it. He finished suiting up, taking off his sneakers and replacing them with swim fins, taping and sealing the sleeves of the wetsuit against his wrists, donning gloves and taping them down as well. At last, he had Tucker help him tape the neckline securely. Danny swung his arms and rolled his shoulders to see if the tape would hold and discovered that Fenton Tape really was all it was cracked up to be.

Suddenly, dawn broke, washing the world orange.

Danny took a deep breath. "This is it."

"You know, you could always bail," said Tucker, "and we could play Doom instead. I wouldn't hold it against you."

"I would," Danny replied, frowning. "I'm tired of sitting around, always letting things happen to me. I'm in high school now. I need to, I don't know, take control of my destiny or whatever."

"Isn't that what Lancer said in his welcome speech?"

"He wasn't wrong," said Danny. "I'm going to fix this. I'm going to be normal again."

Tucker clapped a hand on his friend's shoulder, nodding seriously. "Good luck, man."

"Thanks." He gulped and passed his backpack to Tucker. "Here I go."

Awkwardly in the swim fins, Danny flip-flapped across the sand until he reached the water's edge. The waves rushed in, spilling over his ankles, but his suit kept him dry. For the first time in his life, he felt appreciative of his parents' gear; they really didn't skimp on quality. Danny waded out into the water, deeper and deeper until it had swallowed him to his waist.

He looked down at his old enemy as it tugged his body to and fro. His heart rate skyrocketed. _I can't do this_.

The sun continued to climb the sky, chasing some of the darkness out of the water. But still, Danny could not move. He heard splashing behind him, and when he turned around, saw Tucker trudging through the waves toward him.

"Tuck?" he said as the other boy drew near.

"Sorry, Danny. I was tired of waiting." That was all the warning he had. Then Tucker's foot hooked his ankle and pulled, and Danny fell backward into the water.

He floundered in panic for a few seconds under the surface before he was able to regain his footing in the sand and pull upright. Danny rubbed the salt water out of his eyes and swung a glare at his best friend. He opened his mouth to say some choice angry words –

\- and nothing came out. A tight feeling was building in his chest, one that Danny was painfully familiar with and had never wanted to feel again: he couldn't breathe. His diaphragm tugged and tugged, but it was like something was blocking his airway. Danny ran shaking fingers along his neck, and sure enough, found two long slits in his skin under his jawbone. He hadn't even felt them form…

"Idiot," said Tucker, worry coloring the insult. "Go in the water!"

Growing light-headed, Danny made up his mind. He dropped to his knees; the water lapped at his neck. Then, he closed his eyes and sunk below the surface.

For a second, Danny thought he would die anyway. He didn't know how to breathe with gills! But now that he was underwater, his body took the wheel for him. Unfamiliar muscles in his neck and throat began to move, pulling water in through his already gaping mouth. Then he felt the new muscles in his neck contract as they instinctively pushed the water over the gills and out through their openings. Danny gulped a few more times, and finally the oxygen-deprivation receded. His heart, too, ceased its palpitations.

"… _Danny_... _?_ " Tucker's warbled voice met his ears.

Danny opened his eyes. He was looking at the sand, and he could see his now-white hair floating in the edges of his vision. The particles in the water surrounding him reflected the white glow of his skin and the green of his eyes. He rose again out of the water, to his knees, and turned to Tucker.

"Better?" said the techno-geek.

Danny nodded solemnly and offered his friend a thumbs-up. Already, his body was aching for oxygen. He needed to go back under the water. _Wow. There's something I'd never thought I'd say._

"Great! Then, I guess I'll see you in a couple of days. Seriously, good luck, Danny. And, bring back a hot mermaid for me, okay?"

Danny rolled his eyes and submerged himself in the water once more.

At first, he was not sure how to move. He oriented himself to the east, where eventually he would find the underwater hills and valleys, and started by crawling along the sand, pulling himself forward by walking on his hands while his body hung horizontally above the seabed. The current constantly tried to drag him away, so he countered by digging his fingers in with every 'step'. Danny was concentrating on this so much, eyes locked on the sand beneath him, that he did not realize when he started pulling water in though his nose instead of gulping at it with his mouth.

This worked for a long time, so long in fact that Danny lost track of the time, until the sea floor suddenly dropped off under him.

Danny halted, pulled upwards in surprise, and looked around himself. The surface of the water was remarkably far above his head, and now that the sun had risen, the water was a bright, pleasant blue. Distant golden sunlight rippled on the surface. The sandy ocean floor spread behind him, ridged by shallow, wave-formed dunes. Seaweed and other sea grasses grew in patches here, rippling gently to and fro. A school of small fish rushed by, only a foot away.

Danny's mouth fell open. He had never imagined the ocean looking so beautiful or feeling so peaceful. He had always dreamed of it as a dark, cold place – always associated it with fear or with his parents' crazy (or maybe not-so-crazy) search for merfolk. This, here, was bright and the water actually felt warm against his face.

The current tugged gently at the now-distracted Danny, lifting him a few inches off of the seabed.

That was something else Danny had not anticipated, this feeling of pure weightlessness in the water. It was like he was in zero-gravity. This had to be what it felt like in space.

He smiled at the thought.

But then he remembered his mission, and his face resumed its serious set. He looked forward again to where the ocean floor dipped away at a forty-five degree angle. It dropped the whole floor by about twenty feet, and this new stretch of ocean was thick with sea grass and moss. Here and there mounds of gray rock jutted up from the sand, speckled with water-worn holes. Fish of all sizes swam about. It was teeming with life. Danny had the impression of standing on a cliff overlooking a city.

He did not particularly want to crawl through it like he had been doing so far.

 _Okay, Fenton. Swimming lessons_. An image of Dash flashed across his mind, and Danny grimaced. _Wrong choice of words._

He knew swimming involved moving your arms and legs. Danny was already floating horizontally, so he reached out his arms in front of him, cupped his hands, and pushed them slowly backward. Incredibly, there was resistance, and it was just enough to send Danny several feet forward, and his momentum kept him going. And like that, he was suddenly twenty feet or more above the floor of the ocean and probably that same distance from the surface.

 _Woah._ He stared at the ocean bed far below, then turned over to look up at the surface. The feeling of floating was even more remarkable out here. With how quiet and still it was, if Danny closed his eyes, he really could imagine that he was an astronaut in space.

He realized, _again_ , that he was forgetting what he was supposed to be doing. He wasn't supposed to be enjoying this. Nor did he have any time to waste. Turning his eyes back to the sea floor below, Danny began clumsily pushing his way forward. Experimenting with several ways of kicking and pushing with his arms, he soon began swimming ahead at a decent rate.

Danny swam like this for about twenty minutes. There was little change in the scenery – no undersea hills and certainly no merpeople. Besides growing bored and somewhat frustrated, a dull ache had built in Danny's arms, abdomen and back. He had not realized swimming took so much energy. The last few near-sleepless nights were also catching up with him.

Danny stopped for a rest. He rolled onto his back and crossed his arms under his head. He let himself drift like this, imagining himself in a hammock and watching the sparkling surface far above. He did not realize when his eyes slipped shut.

…

Something was tickling his face.

Danny opened his eyes. There it was, the culprit – a fish nibbling on his nose.

It took his brain a second to catch up, and when it did, Danny sat straight up. The fish, equally startled, bolted. Danny was sitting in the sand, surrounded by seaweed and grasses stretching taller than his head. The water had lost its bright, clear, blue color and turned a dimmer shade of slate.

At some point, Danny must have drifted to the floor. Not only that, he had fallen asleep, for who knew how many hours. Judging by the light, it had been quite a while.

His heart fluttered in his chest. He still did not trust his gills completely, and he was beyond relieved that he had not drowned in his sleep. But even more so, he did not like the fact that he had fallen asleep in one place and woken up _somewhere else_. He did not like that at all.

Danny put his feet under him and pushed upward. By kicking his flippered feet, he quickly rose to the surface, and his head broke the waves. Immediately, he was shocked at the feeling of the air sharp and cold against his bare skin; and the sun had never seemed so bright before. He spent a full minute blinking and readjusting to the surface, and by that point had to dip back under the waves to breathe. Emerging a second time, Danny quickly tried to get his bearings.

First off – there was no land in sight.

Okay. Danny had not anticipated getting lost. From the shore, to the sea hills, and back again, should have been easy, right? In retrospect, maybe thinking that had been pretty stupid. He was glad Tucker wasn't around, or he would be getting another earful.

Second off – it was already afternoon. At best, he had only three or four hours more of daylight. So, not only was he lost, but he had slept away most of his Saturday without finding a trace of a merperson or even reaching the place he'd wanted to look for them. What if he hadn't even cleared his parents' buoys?

Now he would probably have to spend all of Sunday trying to find his way home.

Danny let himself fall back under the waves, and he slowly drifted downwards again.

It hit him like running into a brick wall: this quest of his was hopeless.

He would never get back to normal.

Danny held up his hands before his eyes. They were covered by the neoprene gloves, but he knew what would happen should he take the gloves off. He could even see the glow of his unnaturally green eyes reflecting off the black material of the gloves.

He was a freak, and he would always be a freak.

He started swimming aimlessly forward. There was no point in continuing looking, but Danny was too depressed to think about going home just yet. So wrapped up in his thoughts, Danny did not notice as the water turned gradually darker, nor was he prepared for the ambush.

Suddenly, water rushed at him from all sides, squeezing him tightly and quickly immobilizing him. Danny struggled to move, but it felt like he was treading plastic. It was all he could do to breathe. He dropped steadily, like a stone, into the seaweed forest below, stopping only when he was a few feet from the ground.

**Who are you?**

The deep, disembodied voice invaded Danny's brain, much like Kaima's had. Except this voice was clearly hostile, causing shivers to run over Danny's skin.

A second later, the 'speaker' swam into Danny's sight.

It was a merman. Like Kaima, and like Danny, his body produced its own luminescence. He was generally indigo in color; hair, beard, and fins a deep blue while his skin was only a few shades lighter. His golden eyes shined in sharp contrast to his otherwise dark coloring. His body was ridged by muscles and decorated by bands of black tattoos. Overall, he seemed wild, almost feral.

The golden eyes flicked over Danny's immobile form, and the merman scowled, baring his fangs. **Better yet,** _ **what**_ **are you?**

Shapes moved at the edges of Danny's sight, and he realized that there were two other merpersons in this group. There may have been more hidden among the constantly shifting weeds, for all he knew.

The indigo one's eyes narrowed, and Danny understood that he was waiting on a response. Only, Danny did not know how to respond. He couldn't do that strange mind-speak thing. He opened his mouth and moved his lips, trying to mouth words.

The merman's eyes flicked to Danny's right, and another merman swam into sight. He was lithe, colored silver and purple, and wore a wide necklace of white shells. He seemed to listen to something the indigo merman was 'saying'; then he nodded and raised a hand to Danny, palm up. Bending his hand back, a black barb extended from his purple wrist, releasing with it a stream of something black and sinister-looking.

Like it had a mind of its own, the black stuff floated through the water straight toward Danny. He tried harder, futilely, to move, heart pounding in his chest. He stopped breathing. Even so, the black stuff entered his nose with ease, flowed bitterly down his throat, and passed smoothly over his gills.

The effects were immediate. Hot-cold tingling filled Danny's body, snaking outwards from his heart, quickly numbing everything. His ears filled with a roaring noise, and black smoke clouded his vision. Then, his mind went numb.

* * *

"Jack," said Maddie Fenton, frowning at the data on the computer screen. Jack, currently welding something to the bottom of the Siren Speeder, could not hear anything over the roar of the blowtorch.

She stood and tapped her husband's knee with her foot. Jack turned off the torch, rolled out from under the submarine, and removed his welding helmet. "What is it, sweet cheeks? Time for dinner?"

"You just had lunch, dear," she said, and she shook her head. "Did you schedule the buoys to run maintenance today?"

"No, no I did not," said Jack, proud that for once the blame for something having gone wrong (and by his wife's tone, that was clearly the case now) could not be placed on him.

Maddie crossed her arms and pursed her lips. "Well, _someone_ did. Every buoy from here to Virginia has shut down. They haven't been running since about five o'clock this morning!"

"Did you try the override thingy?"

"I just finished. They should all be back online within the next hour. But what I can't figure out is why they were all turned off simultaneously in the first place."

"Hmm," said Jack, and he remembered the intruder they'd been monitoring for that past week. "Maybe... they've been tampered with."

His wife gasped. "You don't think-"

"They've figured out our defenses? That's exactly what I think."

"But we have shields on all of those buoys," argued Maddie, refusing to believe what her husband was suggesting. "The merpeople shouldn't have been able to get close, and they would have sent out a distress signal had one of them been attacked."

"Only one way to find out," said Jack, and he flung aside his welding gear and leapt to his feet. "To the Fenton Family Merfolk Assault Craft!"

Maddie regarded the computer for another few seconds with narrowed eyes. Then she followed her husband to the Fenton Beach, grabbing an extra Fenton Harpoon as she went. If every buoy for miles around was malfunctioning, who knew what kind of nasties had gotten in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tucker's a good friend for Danny, especially when Danny is pretty clueless. I have so much fun writing Tuck…
> 
> Now I have a confession to make: I come from a land-locked state, and I've swum in the ocean a grand total of four times in my life. Twice at a beach in Washington State, where even in summer the water was cold enough to be numbing (I swam in it anyway, because it was my first time to see the ocean); once in California (much more pleasant swimming conditions); and once in the Aegean Sea – while the water there was beautiful, it was also filled with poisonous sea urchins, and I was kind of nervous the whole time.
> 
> As for boats – I've ridden in one riverboat, four ferry boats, and one fishing boat, and I once rowed a tiny rowboat across a lake. Most (maybe all?) of my nautical knowledge comes from television, Wikipedia, and from 19th century writers like Herman Melville.
> 
> I've definitely never been scuba diving; and I've never been to the coast of North Carolina, where Amity Beach supposedly is.
> 
> In short – I'm totally pulling my descriptions out of thin air. Yeah~ ;D
> 
> Next time: MERPEOPLE


	8. Chapter 8

_You can't believe how bleeding scary the sea is! There's, like, whales and storms and shit! They don't bloody tell you that!_

\- Libba Bray

* * *

"The Fenton Wetsuit," Jack Fenton proclaimed, fists on his hips and one foot propped upon an overturned bucket. Waves crashed behind him, spraying above the deck and glimmering in a brief rainbow. "The only wetsuit in the world that's actually a dry suit! And I'm not just saying that to cover up the fact that I didn't know the difference between the two when I named them," he added, winking.

"Jack, dear, who are you talking to?" said his wife, who was busy checking the data log for the first buoy on their route.

Jack's audience, the seagull sitting on the railing of the MAC, squawked and flew away. "I'm practicing, Mads!" he said, whirling around. "For the day everyone believes in merpeople, and we'll need to start selling our inventions. We're so close to catching one of those merfiends that I can almost taste it..." He paused, thinking about what a merperson would taste like. "And when we do, the world will have to take us seriously! No one will call me, Jack Fenton, a crackpot again! Ha!"

"It would be nice if we could mass produce the wetsuits for market," Maddie said, distractedly. "The darn things cost enough to make. It's probably good the kids never use theirs; we'll never have to worry about replacing them."

"You kidding?" Jack pinched the arm of his suit, yanked, and let it snap back tightly against his skin. "These things are practically indestructible! You'd have to lose your suit at the bottom of the ocean to get rid of it, and what are the chances of that?"

* * *

(meanwhile, at the bottom of the ocean…)

Danny's head felt like someone, probably Dash, had been hitting it with a baseball bat. Little nails of pain dug into his temples and sinuses, and everything felt heavy. He didn't want to open his eyes, fearing that if he did, he would find that Dash actually _had_ decided to beat his brains out with a bat and had succeeding in knocking him unconscious.

… **finally waking up…** , a voice crept through his head. **Notify the em… elp me secure…**

Hands grabbed Danny under his arms, and he felt himself being dragged somewhere. Intermittently he experienced a sensation of floating, and he wondered if, finally, Dash had given him a concussion. Even the air around him felt heavy to move through.

Danny cracked open his eyes. He registered a blur of shadows and light. He closed them again.

Eventually, he was back on the ground, lying on his side with his face pressed to the floor. It was cold and smooth beneath him, like metal, and the room was strangely, almost oppressively, silent. Danny, however, was content to remain in blackness for a while longer, and he did not try to open his eyes again until he felt something hard and cold being clamped tightly around his waist. When he did open his eyes, his vision swam for a few moments before it focused.

The first thing he noticed was that he was underwater. Panicked, he automatically sucked in a breath, and the water was pushed out the sides of his neck, reminding him that he had gills and yes, he had fallen unconscious while wearing them, _again_. Before he could berate himself or imagine the deadly scenario he'd once more skirted, other details began rushing back. Like, being attacked.

Considering that the discolored metal floor he was lying on was totally unfamiliar, he realized the scary merpersons from the seaweed forest must have captured him and taken him somewhere.

_Why is it I'm always getting attacked by someone? Do I have a target on me that only I can't see?_

Finally, Danny realized the full extent of what it meant, being attacked and kidnapped by merpeople. It was Vlad Masters all over again. _…Oh my god. They're going to eat me._

Shaking and feeling drained of energy, Danny rolled onto his stomach, pushed himself up with his hands, and tried to put his legs underneath himself, to stand. He knew he had been chained to the floor, but he felt like if he could face his attackers standing, his chances of survival would be moved from zero, to zero with confidence. His legs moved, but not the way he wanted them to. It was like full consciousness had yet to return to that part of his body. Bemused, Danny took a look at his legs.

Glancing down, Danny quickly realized that his Fenton Wetsuit was gone. He saw his arms first – pearly white, glowing, forearms ridged by some sort of black fins, ending in the webbed, clawed hands he'd grown used to seeing that past week. Under the manacle, his chest and stomach were colored the same shade of white, until that skin faded into something scaly and black… Two flowing, gossamer black-and-white fins fanned out from his hips, obscuring everything past them.

But Danny didn't need to be a genius to figure out the rest; which was good, because he certainly wasn't a genius. His legs were gone.

Danny recoiled. Then somehow, he shot into the open water, and the manacle and chain jerked at his midsection, and he crashed shoulder-first into the floor. He wanted to scream, both in his horror and pain, but though he opened his mouth and willed a sound, nothing came, not even a stream of bubbles.

**You're awake**.

It was a cold, somewhat amused and somewhat condescending voice – like wind chimes in a storm. It entered his brain uninvited, the same as when Kaima had spoken to him, and those mermen who had captured him.

Danny looked around for the speaker. He was on what appeared to be the deck of a wrecked freighter. The floor was rectangular and bare, bordered by some low, corroded walls. The water here was dark blue, far from the surface, but in the distance, tall, bright, crystalline spires stretched to unimaginable heights from an unknown structure. More immediately, a group of merfolk provided weak light to the area with their natural bioluminescence.

There were maybe a dozen of them. Danny noticed the two leaders of the party who had captured him – the tattooed indigo one and the slimy-feeling purple one. He also noticed, to his increasing confusion, Kaima, hovering at the shoulder of a sizable, orange-colored merman with long hair and mustaches that floated wildly in the currents.

But the speaker was clearly the one who spearheaded the group. It was a mermaid. She was almost entirely white in color, but for the blue that colored her hair, eyes, and the tips of her fins. Her bright blue hair was worn atop her head, wound around a white mollusk shell, from which hung several strings of pearls. She appeared to be wearing a breastplate made of bright blue… was that _plastic_? Finally, fastened at the corners of her armor was a cape of woven seagrass, speckled with small, white flowers with flowing petals. Her aura was bright and cold, and while she seemed young, there was a hard wisdom in her eyes.

She pursed her pale, white lips. **Have you nothing to say to the Empress of the Merfolk,** _ **spy?**_

Danny opened his mouth, with no idea at all what he wanted to say. 'Please don't kill me?' 'What the heck is going on?' 'Spy? Who's a spy?' Anything at all to prolong his life by a few seconds. But, like his previous attempts at words, no sounds passed over his lips.

The Empress waited, and her expression hardened further. **What are you doing?**

The muscular, indigo one turned his head to the mermaid, golden eyes flashing through the dark. **I think it might be an idiot,** he said. **All the whelp seems capable of doing is moving its jaws. It can't speak.**

Danny gaped. An idiot? But, the merman was right – Danny couldn't speak.

Suddenly, Danny noticed Kaima's eyes widening and her expression turning to amazement. He met her eyes with his, hoping his desperation was clear in them, but she didn't make any move to help. Then, the Empress addressed him again.

**Can you understand me?**

Danny swallowed, and knowing words were impossible for him, closed his mouth and nodded his head frantically.

**Then it becomes a game of questions…** she muttered. **Do you know who I am?**

Danny shook his head.

**Do you know where you are?**

Again, he shook his head.

The Empress tilted her head back slightly and narrowed her eyes. **Are you working for the Siren King?**

Danny blinked. Who? Then, realizing that answering 'yes' to this question would undoubtedly sign his death warrant, shook his head with vigor.

The Empress's face turned guarded, and she inclined her head toward the others in the group. It became silent again, and it took Danny several minutes of this silence to realize that they were talking among themselves, and he was the only one not privy to the conversation. The changes in their expressions and body language were the only clues that something was passing between them.

Dread weighed heavily on Danny. He was so scared he could hardly think. His whole body was trembling. The only thing he knew with certainty just then was – _I don't want to die._

Every few seconds, Kaima's anxious face turned toward him, and then turned back to the group.

Without warning, the indigo merman and the silver-purple one began to swim toward him. Danny clumsily backed away, but the chain at his waist and his own ineptitude in the water did not let him get far. They removed the manacle and, holding Danny's arms tightly in their clawed grips, carried him from the ship.

* * *

Daru watched the black-and-white creature being dragged from the ship, tail trailing uselessly in its wake and green eyes wide in undisguised terror. It was hard to imagine it being a threat to anyone.

At a signal from the Empress, the council (and its one uninvited guest), returned to the palace, to their usual meeting chambers. Daru could not help glancing at Kaima, glued to his side as though he would protect her from being dismissed, and wondering at her worried face. Her bright blue eyes were downcast, and she was biting her lip.

The girl knew something about the creature, and Daru was fairly certain he knew what that something was.

They entered the chambers through the floor and took their usual positions around the glassy meeting table. Kaima crouched at Daru's side, trying to hide behind his girth, but from the Empress's disapproving glare, it was clear the hiding spot was no good. But, Birghid said nothing about it.

**We should kill it** , one of the councilors, Orlock, said at once.

**Even if we don't know what it is?** countered Daru.

**We know what it is** , said Orlock. His fiery red pelvic fins flapped in his irritation. **It's one of the sirens' failed experiments, sent into our territory to spy.**

Daru raised a brow, imagining what good a lame and dumb spy would be to the Siren King.

**At the very least, it is an abomination. It should not be allowed to exist. So - all in favor of killing the beast?** said Orlock, raising a hand. Five more hands rose, including the Empress's.

Daru saw Kaima's hands clenched tightly into trembling fists at her sides.

**I truly think that is a bad idea, Empress,** he said.

**And why is that, Alchemist?** Birghid replied. She bore her fangs testily.

**Think about how the creature looked when we found it. It had legs, like a human. For what other purpose could it have been created than to go on land?**

Orlock started to argue, but the Empress held up a hand to silence him. **Continue, Daru.**

**Clearly the experiment was a failure,** he said. **More likely than not, it will die on its own in a matter of days, like all the rest.** Birghid nodded, easily accepting that idea. **But I think their magics have progressed a long way if they were able to make such a creature. If nothing else, I'd like to keep it alive to study it.**

The Empress bristled. **I don't want you replicating this, Daru.**

**I wouldn't dream of it** , said Daru, feigning his sincerity perfectly. **I just want to better understand our enemy. To understand what they are capable of, and if it could be used against us. Who could argue with that?**

From the silence in the chamber, apparently no one could – although Orlock seemed to want to.

Daru continued. **It can't swim, and it can't speak. Like I said before, it will probably die on its own in a matter of days. Keep it alive, and let me study it. That's all I ask.**

Empress Birghid stared at him, blue eyes calculating. At length, she nodded. **Fine. I will grant you that.** To the rest of the council: **Any objections? No? Then, the issue is closed.**

One of the older members of the council, a withered elder named Ingrith, spoke up then. **While we're gathered here,** she said, **can we talk about the fishing grounds?**

Another tedious hour was spent in the council chambers, discussing new hunting methods – something that Daru couldn't care less about, and by the way Kaima alternatively fidgeted and dozed off, neither could she. At long last, they were dismissed.

As the council members were dispersing, the Empress finally acknowledged the girl at Daru's side. **Kaima, a word.**

Flinching and hunching her shoulders, Kaima swam meekly across the room to meet her. Daru decided it would be best to wait for the girl outside. He exited through the floor and hovered there, pouring over the implications of the creature and what consequences his decision was sure to bring over the next few days. Especially if the creature did not die as Daru had promised it would.

After a few minutes, Kaima came out of the chamber, swimming past Daru in a straight line that left no doubt as to where she was headed.

Before she could get too far, Daru called to her. **You stole something of mine.**

Surprised, Kaima spun and stared at him. She obviously knew what he meant, and she had no response.

Daru sighed and laid his hands across his large orange belly. **Go. I know you want to see it**.

Kaima nodded thankfully, if still somewhat terrified, and darted out of the palace. Daru watched the bubbles that trailed in her wake as she swam to the Hold.

* * *

It was funny – in a way that really wasn't funny at all – how against all odds Danny had found the person he had been looking for in the vast expanse of the ocean, only to discover she was in league with the people who had captured him and locked him up.

Danny considered this bitterly from the confines of his cell. It was a small, cramped hole, one of many in a honeycomb labyrinth of caves a few minutes' swim from the shipwreck. The room, although that was probably a generous word to use to describe the place, would have been pitch black if not for some glowing turquoise algae growing on the walls and the white light from Danny's own skin. He wasn't entirely sure what the 'bars' of his cell were made from. After the two mermen had dumped him here and insulted him a few more times, it was like the water had solidified in certain places behind them. Even now, the odd, 'hardened' water reflected light like it was made of ice.

Two guards were posted outside.

Danny had dragged himself to the far corner of the room and was now curled there, facing the opposite wall and staring at his… well, his tail.

Nearly useless and entirely incomprehensible, it stretched out from him across the floor, somewhat longer than his legs would have been. It was scaly and almost all black, but for the white that streaked the fins at his hips and the white at the very tip of the tail, which fanned out and looked like it would tear if it caught on a sharp rock – a thought which made Danny shudder.

Basically, except for the white parts, the tail didn't glow. Danny had also discovered another fin that started midway up his back and continued down part of his tail, and it was currently making sitting uncomfortable.

The weirdest part was that he could _feel_ it. When his tailfin brushed against the rocks of the floor, for example, Danny perceived it with sharp sensitivity, and he would shiver at the wrongness of it. He kept trying to move his legs, but they were gone, and this new thing would just twitch, not knowing what to do with the signals it was receiving from Danny's brain.

In short, he didn't like it. Not. One. Bit.

A long time passed, and while Danny had not thought it possible, he began to calm down. He supposed there was only so long a person could sit doing nothing and still feel terrified. He even started to fall into a daze.

Absentmindedly, staring at his tail, he thought about moving it. Obediently, the tailfin flicked up and back down again. Amazed, Danny repeated the action, and it was like something in his brain clicked into place. After all, he had been treating the tail like it was two pieces, like his legs, not one. Experimentally, he lifted the end of the tail from the floor and curled it toward him, until it was within reach of his hands. He brushed the fin gingerly with his clawed fingers, awestruck by the new sensations and the responsiveness.

**Danny?** A familiar voice broke the silence. His tail dropped to the floor like a stone, and he turned his head to the door.

On the other side of the bars of water was Kaima. Seeing his response, her expression changed from worried to joyful. **It really is you!**

Danny merely glared. Being it was the only thing he could do, he tried to put as much meaning into the expression as possible. _Go away._

Kaima said something to the guards at the door, or at least Danny assumed she did, because the next second the bars vanished and she was allowed to swim into the chamber. They reformed behind her as she kneeled next to Danny, blue tail tucked neatly under her.

_You're the last person I want to see right now_ , thought Danny.

Again, Kaima was deaf to this and undaunted by his chilly expression. In fact, she grinned.

**I didn't think it worked. But it did, and you're here.**

_Yeah, and it's all your fault_.

Kaima grabbed his hands, but he jerked them away. Finally, her face fell. **You're mad at me.**

_No duh._

She grinned again, sheepishly this time, and looked off to one side. **Okay, maybe you are** **a prisoner. But at least they don't want to kill you anymore.** She peered closer at his face, unblinkingly, and her scrutiny made Danny squirm. **You don't know how to speak, do you? Just like before.**

Scowling, Danny shook his head; his white hair floated at the edges of his vision.

**I can teach you. Since we can hardly have a conversation like this.** Kaima smiled at Danny's hopeful expression. She continued, **I've never taught someone how to speak before. I mean, it seems obvious. You just** _ **do**_ **it.** Again, Danny glared at her. **Er, never mind.**

The young mermaid adopted a thoughtful expression, and Danny wondered if the guards had any idea what she was saying to him. However, if what had happened before was any indication, merpeople could choose who heard what.

**It's simple really. A baby could do it. Babies** _**can** _ **do it. Just think about what you want to say, and say it in the other person's head.**

Danny gaped at Kaima, disbelieving. Simple? How was that simple? And if he failed, what, he was more inept than a baby?

**Just try. It's like thinking, only with more substance. Think heavy, tangible thoughts.**

Danny frowned, but he had decided what he wanted to say. Now, he concentrated on putting the words where they needed to go, into Kaima's head. He thought about how her words crawled across his brain, invasively, and imagined his own words doing the same. Focusing on Kaima, he pointedly thought, **That was the worst explanation ever.**

She beamed. **No, it wasn't. I heard you.**

Danny blinked. Repeating the process, he thought, in her head, **You did?**

**Yes.** She nodded enthusiastically. **See, it's easy.**

Dumbfounded, Danny leaned his head back against the wall. This was too much. It was all too much. He shouldn't be able to do this. He shouldn't be here. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his fists into his temples.

**Are you okay?**

Danny shook his head. After a few seconds of concentration, he opened his eyes and said, **I don't want this. I don't want to be here. I don't want to be like** _ **this**_ **,** he waved a hand over himself, **and I don't want this weird mind-reading power.**

**It's not weird,** said Kaima, **and it's not 'mind-reading'.**

**That's not the point!** Danny fumed. **I want you to change me back to normal.** _ **My**_ **normal.**

**You don't want to be a merperson? Why not?**

For a moment, Danny lost his focus, and he knew from Kaima's expectant face that his words weren't reaching her. On the third try he managed to say, **Because I don't want to be different from everyone! I want to live a normal life, and I can't do that if I'm not human like everyone else!**

Kaima flinched at his outburst, and he realized that, being it was being spoken directly into her head, it must have felt very harsh.

**You can live down here,** the girl suggested. **Right?**

**In _here_? No, thank you.** Danny closed his eyes for a few seconds, reigning in his temper, and said, **Look, Kaima, I have family up there, and friends. Who are all human. Surely you understand. That's my life – whatever problems I might have, I can't just** _ **leave**_ **it. I don't want to. So please.** He opened his eyes again and looked at her earnestly. **Please change me back.**

Kaima was quiet, and from his short time around the girl, Danny got the feeling this was uncharacteristic. Meaning, it was bad news. His heart sank, and before she began to speak, he knew what she was going to say.

**I can't.**

Danny was almost too devastated to reply, but he forced himself to ask, **Why not?**

Kaima shook her head, eyes downcast. **It doesn't work like that.**

Danny stared at the opposite wall, at the glowing algae, telling himself that from now on, this would be his reality. In fact, these very walls might be his reality. He would be trapped, in this body, in this prison, for the rest of his life. _This is it._ In truth, though, no matter what he told himself, he felt numb. He couldn't even muster anger.

**You did this to me, knowing you couldn't reverse it. That's so… irresponsible.**

**I thought I was helping you** , Kaima said, in a small voice. Danny believed her. After all, no matter if she was a merperson, she was just a kid, and kids did stupid things. He should know.

After a while Danny said, if only to change the subject to something less uncomfortable: **So they aren't going to eat me?**

**Why do you keep saying that?** said Kaima. Like Danny had intended, her guilt was momentarily forgotten. **Merfolk don't eat humans, and we definitely don't eat other merfolk… or, whatever you are now. We** _ **eat**_ **fish.**

Danny frowned. That didn't make sense. According to his parents, and the story of the boat attack and Vlad Masters's kidnapping, that was the number one proven fact about merpeople. And if merpeople could manipulate water, and by this point Danny was certain they could, that would explain the water tentacles that pulled the people overboard.

If not merpeople, just what were his parents hunting? Or better yet, what should they have been hunting?

Before Danny could wonder much more about that, Kaima asked him another question. **Skulker and Reever said you had legs when they found you. Why did you only now turn into a real merperson?**

Danny shrugged. **I only turn into one when I touch water. Then, when I dry off, I change back. When… those two… found me, I was wearing a wetsuit.** Danny groaned. _Oh man. The wetsuit. Mom and Dad are going to kill me._

Kaima's eyes were wide. **Really?** She raised her hands, and suddenly the water around Danny's left hand began to slide around.

He raised his hand in front of his eyes and gaped as the water was sucked away and a bubble of air formed around it. The air inside the bubble became drier and drier until, seconds later, his hand had reverted to its normal, human form.

**You're right!** Kaima said. She let the bubble pop, and Danny's hand quickly changed again to match the rest of him. **That's so weird. I wonder if Daru knew about this…**

**Who?**

**Oh. Nothing,** Kaima lied. She bounced a little. **If you can change back into a human whenever you want to, isn't everything fine?**

**Whenever I want to?** asked Danny, incredulous. Finally, he was becoming used to talking like this. Until now, his responses had lagged by several seconds. **You can't imagine how hard this past week has been for me.**

**Just keep the water off of you!** said Kaima, altogether too cheerfully. **Or, don't tell me you can't control water either?**

Danny thought about the incident at the crosswalk on Thursday afternoon. Hesitantly, he said, **No, I can…**

**Then, great! This is perfect. You can be a human and a merperson all at the same time.**

Danny wouldn't call it perfect. It was just about the farthest thing from perfect. But, it might have been the best offer he was going to get from the universe just then, and he wasn't about to spit on it.

Of course, if he couldn't escape from this cave, whether or not he could change back to human at will would become a moot point. It was too soon to feel hopeful.

**Yeah, but only if I get out of here first.**

The magenta mermaid showed her fangs in a smile that suggested both determination and mischievousness. **No problem. Leave that to me.**


	9. Chapter 9

" _You do your own time in prison. You don't do anyone else's time for them."_

\- Neil Gaiman

* * *

The dead fish floated sluggishly to the floor, where it bounced a little and settled.

Danny looked from it to the indifferent guard, who had already turned his back on the cell. Then he returned his eyes to the fish, wondering for what possible reason it had been tossed into the cell so unceremoniously. At first he thought it was a morbid warning from the Empress. _Behave, spy, or this will be you._

However, it was at about the same time that Danny's stomach gurgled, reminding him he had not eaten since before leaving Tucker's house, at least a day earlier. Actually, his stomach had been what woke him up that morning. Assuming it was morning. It was hard to tell how much time had passed, in the unchanging darkness of the prison.

So he remembered Kaima's exclamation regarding the merfolk diet: _Merfolk don't eat humans. We_ eat _fish._

Fish.

_Don't tell me that's breakfast,_ thought Danny, glaring pointedly at the carcass. _I've heard of sushi, but this is ridiculous._

After Kaima's vague – and honestly worrying – promise the night before, the young mermaid had returned home, leaving Danny alone in the prison with only his thoughts for company.

It had been a difficult night, and that was putting it lightly.

First off, the cell was in no way a comfortable place to sleep. Rather than 'prison', a more apt word was 'dungeon'. (Danny wondered, for Lancer's sake, if there was an even more dismal word for the holding place.) It was cold, barren, and cramped, the floor was uneven and rocky, and even the water tasted stale when Danny breathed it.

It would have been an uncomfortable place for any human, but Danny thought it must have been doubly so for a merperson. There was way too much of him in this form – his tailfin continuously scraped against sharp rocks, and he didn't even know what all of the other fins were _for_. Seriously, why did he need so many freaking fins? Were they just there to get in the way? No matter how he tried to sit or lay, one of them inevitably ended up smushed underneath him.

Even the webbing between his fingers was beginning to bug him. He couldn't stretch his fingers as far as he was used to, and while the bending range of his fingers had never been a blip of an issue for Danny, it had become a major annoyance now. One of many on a growing list of them.

Worst of all, Danny could not remember a time in his life when he had felt so alone or helpless, and his own insignificance scared him. Yes, there were the times when he had been sure he would drown to death, but at least then he had never had enough time to _reflect_ on it. Now, every new thought was as uncomfortable as a new rock digging into his back.

Danny realized many things over the course of the night.

He realized that in his life, he had always had someone to turn to when things were too hard to bear – Tucker, Jazz, even his parents. Always, he had been able to see a light at the end of the tunnel, whether that light was his dreams for the future or simply the knowledge that bad things couldn't last. But, here in this cell, he had no one. And he'd been told in no uncertain terms that this bad thing _would_ last. Even if he escaped, he would be stuck with this body forever.

He missed his family. When he closed his eyes, he imagined his mom's warm smile as she nursed his bruises or put Saturday morning pancakes on the table. He saw his dad behind the wheel of the Boat, grinning as he ranted about his merfolk-finding inventions. He saw Jazz's patient face as she promised to keep all of the bullying at school a secret, and remembered her disgusted looks every time he succeeded in grossing her out.

Danny realized he had meant everything he said to Kaima. Those words hadn't just been excuses to return to normal. His family was the most important thing in the world to him, and he couldn't believe he might never see them again. He couldn't believe he had never told them that he cared about them. It was so simple, but he had never done it, and now he might never get the chance. Did they know? Did they even know?

He wanted to go home.

And what would happen when Danny didn't return home that weekend? At what point would Tucker have to explain what happened? How would Danny's parents react?

Danny had not wanted to think about that. It was too painful to imagine. He had curled up on his side in the small cave, back to the guards, and stared at the turquoise algae, trying to keep his imagination under control, to push the most unbearable thoughts away. He tried to accept that he could only wait – for something, for anything. At some point, he must have closed his eyes and fallen asleep, because the next thing he knew, his stomach was growling and one of the guards was tossing in that murdered fish.

Morning had not brightened the situation. Danny felt exhausted, childish, and foolish. Staring at the fish, Danny wondered why he had thought searching for Kaima was a good idea. He wasn't smart. He wasn't strong. He wasn't even good at swimming.

_I'm about as useless as that dead fish_.

The fact that he could relate to a dead fish only made him feel more pathetic.

He took a deep breath. _C'mon, Fenton. Let's take this one thing at a time._

He would deal with his most immediate problem. Being – should he, or shouldn't he, eat that?

* * *

Kaima woke up early the next morning, unsure if she had actually slept during the night. She had been too full of nervous energy, which redoubled when it became daylight. The young mermaid bolted up, pausing long enough to get dressed and drag a plastic comb through her hair before darting out through the window of her bedroom. Doing so, she scattered a school of mackerel that were swimming by the upper towers of the palace.

Hardly anyone was awake yet, and besides the fish, the grayish morning waters were still. But, Kaima knew Daru would not have slept in. She only hoped he had not left his chambers yet.

Kaima dove toward the base of the palace, pumping her tail as quickly as she could, arms pressed tight to her sides. She pulled up at the last moment when she reached the rocky outcrops at the bottom, tumbling through a patch of seaweed and becoming tangled for a full minute. Some of the sentries making their rounds shook their heads as they swam past.

Seaweed wrapped around her waist, Kaima swam through a gate into the lowest level of the palace, carved into the bedrock, unlike the rest of the palace which was wrought of glass and crystal. Here it was dark, and luminescent algae of different colors grew wildly on the walls. Now and again, glowing stones jutted from the floor, providing further light to the otherwise dark corridors.

Finally, Kaima reached Daru's chambers. At the end of one hall, a warped plastic door gleamed as Kaima approached, faintly reflecting her pink light. Without knocking, she pushed the door open and swam inside.

Kaima had always loved Daru's rooms, and if she hadn't been so preoccupied, she would have stopped to look around; there was always something different, something new, to be discovered here. It was one of the things that made Daru's place so much fun to visit!

Today, however, Kaima ignored the fish that swam freely through the water, the sea flowers and seagrasses that grew tall in the gardens, the glass balls of multi-colored light that lined the walls, and swam straight toward the big orange merman at the center of it all.

Daru had yet to notice Kaima, or if he had, he wasn't showing it. Currently, he was bent over a table and engrossed in whatever was stretched out there. Kaima swam up to his shoulder and looked over it, ogling at the strange object and momentarily forgetting her quest.

It was something black and white and rubbery, and it was vaguely human-shaped, if humans didn't have heads. After a few seconds, Kaima realized it was human clothing – vastly different from what she had seen Danny wearing a week ago, though.

**What is it?** she asked.

Not turning his head, Daru replied, **Skulker and Reever say our 'spy' was wearing this when they found him. They thought it was odd – a human with the head of a merman – and Skulker, wanting to see what the body looked like, began to remove the clothes. Imagine his surprise when the creature suddenly grew fins and a tail. I think he was close to gutting it and mounting its head on his wall; we're lucky he decided to talk to the council first. Aren't we, Kaima?**

Kaima gulped. Then she frowned. **Can't you just say you're mad at me and get it over with?**

At last, Daru looked at her, and when he did, his expression softened. His beard floated gently in the slight current in his rooms. **If I'm mad, it's only because what you did was incredibly stupid. If your mother knew-**

**You won't tell her?** said Kaima, eyes wide.

**I would be in more trouble than** _ **you**_ **if I did, little guppy.** He pulled at his mustache and turned his eyes back to the human clothing, expression thoughtful. **And, if I were to tell you the truth, I'm extremely interested in this new creature you've created.**

**His name's Danny,** said Kaima. She couldn't help the feeling of pride swelling within her. She wasn't wrong. Daru had just praised her.

**You spoke with him?** said Daru, sounding surprised.

Kaima nodded brightly. **I had to teach him how to talk. Apparently humans don't know how. They use their mouths. It's really weird. But, that isn't important right now, Daru! We have to help him escape.**

Daru raised a brow. **You aren't wrong** , he admitted after a few seconds. **The longer he is here, living, the more the council will perceive him as a threat. Does anyone else know he can speak?**

Kaima shook her head, though she honestly didn't know. She simply hoped Danny wasn't fish-brained enough to talk to one of the guards. But really, there was no telling. Humans did pretty silly things, as far as Kaima was concerned.

**Won't they think he's a threat if he escapes, though?**

**Better they think he's a threat that's swimming out of their reach, back to the Siren King, than a threat waiting to be cut down at their convenience. My only concern is where to hide him once we free him… There's only so long Skulker and Reever will follow him into siren territory before they realize he isn't there. Skulker isn't called the ocean's greatest hunter for nothing.**

Kaima grinned. **How good is he at hunting things on land?**

It wasn't often that the mermaid knew more than Daru, about anything. Sure, she was often his eyes in places where he would be too conspicuous, gathering information he would otherwise have no access to. But, being his eyes was not the same as being his brain, and most of the time Kaima had no idea what it was she was reporting.

So, Daru's bewildered and amazed expression now was extremely satisfying, and Kaima drew out the suspense of her explanation as much as she dared.

**If we put Danny back on land, he'll become human again.** Kaima waited expectantly for Daru put the pieces together. She loved how smart he was and how intense he became when his mind was working at something.

**Of course** , said Daru, pulling back from the clothing and staring at it with a new sight. **The part of him that is merfolk reacts to our natural habitat, and the part that is human is drawn out on the land. It's… perfect.**

Kaima nodded. It was exactly like she had told Danny – perfect. Although, it would have been more perfect had it turned Danny completely merfolk. Humans were nasty, and Danny would have been better off living down here.

Suddenly, she remembered the hurt in his eyes, the way he had glowed so intensely, when she had told him he couldn't return to normal last night. When he had thought he would never see his friends and family again. _Well… that makes sense… I guess_. Guilt nibbled at her, but she shook it off.

_He's just upset because he's in the Hold. He'll thank me for this someday. I'm sure he will._

Daru turned his bright golden eyes to Kaima; they flicked up and down her form, and he said, **I hope you realize, what you did isn't the same as bringing home a stray animal.**

Kaima pouted and flicked the fins at her hips. **Duh. I'm not a kid anymore, Daru.**

**Good.** Daru began to fold the clothing in half and then quarters. As he withdrew a woven seagrass bag from one of his many alcoves, he said, **The boy isn't a pet, but he is your responsibility. From now on, anything he does and anything that happens to him comes back to you.**

**Seriously?** said Kaima.

Daru placed the clothing inside the bag and began to sort through some of the glass balls resting in the indentations of another table nearby. **Seriously** , he replied, voice only half jesting. **It's the price you pay for messing with another creature's life.**

Kaima crossed her arms. **I'm going to put him back where I found him.**

**And I'm going to help you,** said Daru. He placed several glass balls, filled with swirling black waters, into the bag and passed it to Kaima. **The clothing is impermeable,** he explained, when Kaima peered bemusedly into the bag. **'Danny' was able to stay dry, even in the ocean, thanks to it. I have the feeling he will be missing it. As for the potions, they are a concentration of numbing poison strong enough to rival Reever's. I realize hydrokinesis isn't your strong suit, but even you should be able to use these.**

**Finally** – Daru produced a snail shell, and knocking it against his wrist a few times, retrieved a bright red fish egg. **Something to put out your lights. The effects don't last long, but it should be long enough.** Daru gave two of the shells to Kaima and watched as she placed them carefully into the bag. **One for you, and one for your Danny.**

Daru smirked, although Kaima was not sure what he found so funny. He was weird like that sometimes. **I'll visit his cell later this morning. If I'm lucky, I can be the one to report this incident to Her Majesty. I only wish I'd had a chance to see him up close.**

Kaima darted forward and wrapped her arms around Daru's neck. **I knew I could count on you! Thank you!**

His glow brightened with amusement, and he removed the young mermaid from his neck. **Just come back safely, little guppy.**

* * *

Danny was still staring at the fish, frozen in indecision, when Kaima appeared. He wilted with relief. She would be able to explain this pale corpse that he had been sharing his cell with for the last thirty minutes.

After glaring at Danny's guards, presumably arguing with them in mind-speak, she was admitted into the cell. The water-bars vanished and reappeared again behind her.

**Good morning!** she said cheerfully into Danny's head. It was the most energetic he had ever seen her; in fact, she seemed almost nervous. Her blue hair was piled on top of her head today, tied there with a bunched-up strip of Saran wrap, but strands that had escaped were floating wildly around. Kaima knelt down in front of him; she eyed the fish.

**Why haven't you eaten breakfast? Never mind. You're escaping today, so listen carefully.**

Shocked, Danny looked at the guards outside of the cell, expecting them to storm in and drag the young mermaid away, but they never turned around, never even twitched. Belatedly, Danny realized this conversation was private. He supposed there were no eavesdroppers in merfolk society.

**I'm going to knock out the guards, then we're going to swim out of the Hold as fast as we can. Are you ready?**

Danny blinked, waiting for more. Clumsily, he formed some words: **That's your plan?**

**That's the gist of it! So, are you ready? Do you want to eat first?**

Danny scowled one last time at 'breakfast' and said, **No, I'm good…**

Kaima nodded, her hair bouncing, but then she quickly smacked a hand on top of her head to hold the hair down. She grinned sheepishly. Danny had no idea what this was about until she reached into her hairdo and removed a small glass orb filled with black water. It reminded Danny unpleasantly of the stuff that merman had used to knock him out yesterday.

**This is poison** , Kaima informed Danny. **I'm going to use it on the guards. As soon as I do, the bars will disappear. Then we go.**

She was about to crack the glass open on the floor when Danny grabbed her wrist. Kaima stared at him as he struggled to mind-speak again: **Wait!**

**I** _**am** _ **waiting. What are you doing?**

Danny wondered if he still had the ability to blush; he was sure, if he did, he would be bright red. Not meeting Kaima's eyes, he said, **I can't swim.**

**What do you mean?** asked Kaima. **Are you hurt?**

Did he have to spell this out for her? And was he going crazy, or was his skin glowing more brightly than ever? **I mean, this is my first time to have a… to not have legs… and I can't move it.**

**Can't move what?**

Exasperated, Danny thrust his hands toward his lower half and said, **That!**

Kaima looked at the tail, back to Danny, to the tail, and back to Danny again. **You're kidding, right? You can't speak, you can't swim – you really are like a baby.** From the way she said this, it was clear she was not amused. **Have you even tried?**

He did not want to answer this because, not including the one time last night, he had not. Glowering, Danny concentrated on the tail, reminding himself that it was a single piece and should move like one. He managed to lift the fin, wave it back and forth a few times, and placed it back on the floor. **And that's the extent of my swimming abilities.**

Kaima hesitated. She glanced between him and the bars of the cell and chewed her lip. **It's good enough** , she decided at last. **You'll figure it out. But we have to go now, while it's still dark.**

At first, this seemed reasonable enough, until Danny remembered that merpeople _glowed in the dark_. He was about to point this out, but Kaima was already knocking the glass ball against the floor, like she was breaking an egg. After three soft hits, the glass cracked open, and the black substance inside began to leak out. Immediately, Danny scooted away and slapped his hands over his gills.

**Don't be such a wimp,** said Kaima. She held one of her hands over the glass ball, and the black water inside trickled out to collect near her palm in a swirling cloud, like a sentient shadow born from the darkness of the cell. Kaima shifted toward the guards, raised another hand and, frowning, began to guide the poison in two thin streams toward the unsuspecting mermen.

Danny understood it now, how Skeever or Reever or whatever the guy's name was had been able to guide that poison straight into him. Merpeople could control water, so they could make something like poison go wherever they wanted it to. It was amazing and terrifying at the same time.

The poison reached the guards. Kaima swiftly moved her hands apart, and the poison shot right into the guards' gills. In seconds, the two were collapsing to the floor. Immediately after, the bars of the cell disintegrated.

**Come on!** said Kaima. She grabbed Danny's wrist and pulled him along as she darted out of the cell. Danny wanted to scream 'Wait!' again, but couldn't manage to transmit so much as a squeak.

Kaima dragged him along, whipping around corners, while Danny's useless tail banged into the stone walls. After four or five such turns, Kaima pulled him sharply into an alcove, where his momentum slammed him into the wall. It was good his concentration was in tatters, or he would have put some very rude words into this girl's head.

Kaima was rummaging in a bag. After a couple of seconds, she produced two small snail shells. She hit one against her wrist until a red fish-egg popped out into her hand. She dropped this into Danny's hand, said **Eat,** and set to work on the second shell.

**What?** Danny managed to ask.

Kaima got another fish egg to fall out of the shell. She put this in her mouth, swallowed, and said again, **Eat it!**

Danny was still hesitating, so she plucked the egg up and shoved it into his mouth. **Swallow, don't chew it.**

He pretended it was a pill and did as she asked, if only because he was tired of Kaima yelling at him. When he had done this, he noticed something strange. It was getting darker. Kaima was fading in front of his eyes, and so was he.

**What's happening?** he asked.

**Daru gave those to me – they put out our lights, but only for a little while. Maybe we can sneak past the sentries now.** Daru again, whoever that was; now didn't seem like the time to ask. When it was nearly pitch black in their alcove, Danny felt Kaima grab his wrist again. **Let's go.**

The going was slower now, and so Danny got a break from being slung around like a sack. It seemed Kaima was having as much trouble seeing as Danny, because without their bioluminescence, the only lights in the dungeon were the intermittent growths of algae and some occasional glowing rocks. Those and the guards, who Kaima skillfully avoided. Danny had been put in a more deserted part of 'the Hold', as Kaima called it, so that was lucky for them.

At last, Kaima pulled Danny through a hole and they were back in open water. Danny saw nothing he recognized from yesterday – no shipwreck, no glowing towers of glass. They must have come out the opposite side. At their back was a wall of rock, speckled with cave mouths. To their front was a black ravine and mountains of gray rock. The water was not dark, per se, but it was a dull gray color that made everything look the same. Danny understood why Kaima had wanted to leave when they did.

Danny let Kaima tow him along; he didn't protest, didn't ask questions. He only hoped he wasn't as much dead weight as he felt he was. Kaima wore a mask of concentration that seemed uncharacteristic on her face. She led them carefully around jagged spires of rock and hid them whenever she thought she saw a sentry.

It seemed to take forever, but finally they escaped the rocky labyrinth and swam into a seaweed forest. Not until they were deep inside, however, did Kaima stop to rest. She pulled Danny to the rocks and sand at the bottom and let go of his wrist, before she lay down and floated a couple feet above the ocean floor. Danny sank like a stone.

Overhead, the water was brightening. So were Kaima and Danny; the fish eggs, or whatever they had ingested, were wearing off.

**Are we safe here?** Danny asked.

**Yeah,** said Kaima, grinning. The fins at her hips flipped back and forth. **We did it! We can't stop for long, though. As soon as my mom knows you're gone, Skulker and Reever will be on your trail. We have to get you back on land before they catch up.**

Back on land. He hadn't thought he would ever get back home. Now, thanks to Kaima, it was in reach. Danny almost felt grateful, and he would have had this not all been Kaima's fault to begin with.

Something else caught his attention. **Your mom? Why does your mom care if I'm in the Hold or not?**

**Oh yeah!** said Kaima, scratching at one of her ears and looking off into the forest. **I guess I forgot to mention. The Empress, Birghid? She's my mother.**

Danny's jaw dropped. That terrifying white and blue mermaid from yesterday… was Kaima's _mom?_ Trying, and failing, to hide his shock, he said, **Uh, you… uh, have her hair…**

**Yeah, and that's all I have,** said the mermaid, crossing her arms behind her head. She flicked her tailfin, and the gesture looked somehow irritated. **Let's not talk about her, okay? Instead,** and Kaima suddenly rolled over and grinned down at Danny, _**you're**_ **going to learn how to swim.**

* * *

Kaima pulled Danny into the open water just above the forest and then let go. He immediately began to sink, and noticing this, started treading water with his hands.

**You can't just let your tail hang there and do nothing,** said Kaima. **Of course it's going to drag you down.** She frowned and bared her fangs at Danny. **But your problem is that you don't** _ **want**_ **to use it… isn't it?**

Danny worked his jaw. Of course he didn't want to use it. Using it would be like _accepting_ it, and that was the last thing he wanted to do. Besides, after today, he had no plans to have a tail ever again.

**I'm not going to carry you all the way home,** said Kaima. **If you want to go back, you're going to have to work for it.**

**Fine!** said Danny. **Just stop insulting me and tell me what to do. Aren't you supposed to be teaching me?**

Kaima threw her head back and fluttered her fins – laughter. **I am teaching you! You're just too busy being a dimwit to notice**. Before Danny had the time to send back some nasty reply, Kaima continued, **You can use your tail to help you float. Move your fin against the water, keep treading with your hands, and you should be able to stay upright and in one place. That's step one.**

Frowning, Danny took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He focused on his tail, all those pounds of dead weight and fish parts that were now attached to his body. He could feel the cool currents rushing against his skin (his scales?); he could feel the bruises from their escape, beginning to ache more and more. Like he had done before, he moved the tail fin forward and back, forward and back, feeling the resistance of the water, trying to ignore how foreign the sensation was. After a few seconds, he realized he could stop pumping his hands so much.

**There. Easy,** said Kaima.

Danny opened his eyes. He watched his tailfin flowing back and forth. She was right. It _was_ easy.

Kaima drifted horizontal just over Danny's head. The surface of the water above her was beginning to twinkle with yellow sunlight. Looking down at him, she said, **Let's try floating next.**

**I know how to float,** said Danny.

**Great! Show me.**

Much like he had done the day before, Danny fell onto his back in the water and stretched out flat. He smirked up at Kaima.

**Just now!** she said. **You moved your tail and you didn't even think about it, did you?**

Danny's smirk fell off.

**Why do you look so disappointed? You're not supposed to think about swimming, you're just supposed to do it. So, come on! Let's swim for real now.** Kaima immediately swept her arms through the water and to her sides, and swam away from Danny. He watched her carefully, knowing she'd want him to try this next and call him a 'dimwit' or a 'baby' if he couldn't. Kaima moved like a snake through the water, her entire lower body from hips to tailfin moving up and down in a wave. After a hundred meters or so, she made a wide turn and came back. **Your turn,** she said, crossing her arms.

Danny grimaced and nodded. He turned over onto his stomach, stretched out his arms and used them to push off. He shot forward a few feet, and his momentum kept him going, but he was quickly slowing back down. _Okay, Fenton. Pretend you're doing the worm. Pretend like you actually know how to do the worm in the first place, let alone with a tail._ So Danny dropped his stomach, arched the base of his spine, and was shocked when muscles began reacting like dominoes from the top to the base of his tail. His fin took the energy from the rest of his body, pushed up, pushed down, and he moved forward.

Danny's heart thudded in his chest, even as he slowed back to a crawl. He had the same thrill he had felt when he first used his gills, or when he moved his tailfin in the cell the night before. He realized then that his body already knew how to do everything; the only thing getting in the way was Danny's belief that he couldn't do any of this.

Danny realized what he needed to do next, and he did it. He stopped thinking. When he moved again, there was no surprise, because why should his body be surprised when it had known it could do this from the start? He swam out some ways, his tail pumping behind him, and when he decided to turn, the fins at his hips reacted, acting like rudders as his turned his whole body the way he wanted to go.

Danny reached Kaima again; he stopped by pushing back with his arms and pelvic fins, and was once again treading water, vertically upright.

Kaima was grinning, a little smugly. **I** _ **told**_ **you you'd figure it out.**

**Am I better than a baby yet?** quipped Danny.

**Yeah. But only just.** She spun around in the water and pushed off in another direction. **Now try to keep up!**

* * *

"The Fenton Baby Buoys are on the move!" announced Jack. Shielding his eyes against the glare of the sun, he watched the two tiny machines zip away from Buoy #6, leaving a trail of white foam on the top of the water. "Look at those Babies go!" He whistled.

Saturday's thorough investigation of the Fenton Buoys had revealed that all were in working order, and none showed any signs of having been tampered with. Each had reported the same thing, that it had received a command from Fentonworks at 05:07:36 to begin the routine maintenance sequence.

Maddie and Jack had concluded the only thing they could – that the Fentonworks control center had suffered a major malfunction. Feeling only slightly comforted by this, they initiated diagnostics and went to bed.

Today they had decided to tackle the next problem – finding out if any merpersons had made it through to the coast. Even one breach would put dozens of humans at risk. There had been no reports of suspicious activity so far, but that didn't mean the East Coast was safe.

Thus the 'Baby Buoys'. Two could be deployed from each Fenton Buoy, and after updating their software that morning, all the machines were fresh and ready to go. The BBs – the Babies, Jack insisted – were automated water drones, about a foot long and able to course-correct in crowded waters. They tested the water for the merpeople's unique chemical signatures, and finding any, would use sonar to try to locate the intruder. After leaving the 'Mother Buoy', the BBs would shoot for the coast and come back by an alternate route; it wasn't perfect surveillance, but the BB system covered a wider area than the Fentons could hope to do manually.

Their only downsides were their limited battery life and tendency to stop working before reaching home, meaning they'd drop into sea and cost the Fentons some expensive technology. It was a special occasion to send them out.

Maddie leaned back against the rails of the deck, crossing her arms and staring pensively at the water. When Jack noticed his wife wasn't seeing off the Babies with quite as much enthusiasm, he ambled over to her.

"Everything okay, babycakes?"

She pursed her lips. "I just can't shake this feeling. Last weekend a merperson breaches our buoys not once, but twice? Now our buoys malfunction? This is too much of a coincidence, Jack."

Jack nodded. "That's 'cause it's not a coinkidink – this is war. But we're going to meet those fiends at every turn, Mads, 'cause we're Fentons and that's what we Fentons do best."

Just then, the monitor inside the cockpit squealed. The Fentons flew to the screen. Buoy #9 had picked up a chemical signature. Maddie immediately rerouted one of the BBs to return to its mother and sweep the area. Not two minutes later, the BB had found them.

_Them_. There were two.

Maddie and Jack met each other's eyes. "They're going to Amity Beach," said Maddie.

"Not if we get there first!" Jack threw himself into the seat behind the wheel and started their engines.

The MAC shot across the waters like a rocket.

* * *

**You're enjoying yourself,** said Kaima. **Just admit it.**

**Am not,** Danny retorted, trying to wipe the smile off his face.

The sun had climbed high into the sky, and all around them the water was warm, sparkling with light. Fish teemed in the grasses below them, shimmering silver as their scales reflected the sunlight. They had been swimming for over an hour now and had put the seaweed forest, the Hold, all of the Merfolk Empire far behind them. After he got used to it, Danny couldn't believe how quickly he could swim, and effortlessly.

It felt like flying.

Kaima pointed at his face. **Then what's that? Because that looks suspiciously like a smile.**

**Shut up,** he said, knocking her hand away. But the grin was back.

Just then, a shadow passed overhead. Kaima jerked to a stop, so Danny overshot her and had to double back. Kaima was staring up at the surface, her fins flicking anxiously and face tight. Danny followed her gaze and saw it - the hull of a boat.

It moved slowly over their heads, like a cloud. One long minute later, it was gone.

Kaima started swimming again, slowly this time. Danny drew up beside her.

**Are you afraid of merhunters?** he asked.

**Duh,** said Kaima. **Everyone is. But it isn't just hunters. It's humans. Why do you think our palace is so well-hidden?**

Kaima's impression was that humans would eat merfolk like they ate fish. Danny wondered if she knew that most humans didn't even believe merpeople existed.

Something wasn't making sense. **If you're afraid of people, why were you so close to shore that one day?**

**What are you talking about?**

**The day you saved me from drowning. You were** _ **there**_ **,** said Danny, **right next to that boat.**

Kaima chewed her lip. **I was treasure-hunting, and before you say anything,** _ **no**_ **, it's not a guppy hobby. It takes a lot of skill, and courage, and you never know when dying humans are going to fall right on top of you, so there.**

**Okay!** said Danny, holding up his hands. **I believe you.**

They swam on in silence for a few more minutes. Another boat passed overhead, and other shadows appeared in the distance. Below them, the ocean was becoming more and more shallow. Kaima and Danny decided to swim closer to the floor.

Kaima noticed it before Danny did. **What's that?**

**What?**

The mermaid pointed to the surface. **I think it's following us.** Above them, maybe twenty feet away, was a tiny black shadow, too small to be a boat. Danny squinted at it, and he followed Kaima when she swam up to get a closer look.

Their heads broke the surface, and for a moment, Danny was blinded. The sun was dazzling, the air was cold, the wind felt sharp on his skin. He couldn't breathe. Kaima dragged him back under the water.

**Idiot!** she yelled in his head. **What were you doing?**

**The same as you!** he said.

She glared at him. **Don't just stick your head out where anyone could see you. Just your eyes, dimwit!**

They tried again. This time, Danny kept everything from his nose down in the water. It was still horribly bright – his pupils ached – but soon enough he was able to see. What he saw greatly disturbed him.

About a foot away, churning water as it fought the waves, was what looked like a toy boat. It was small, metal, and gray, and plastered on its side in bold green-and-black were the letters F and W. Its bow was pointed directly at them.

**No, no, no,** said Danny. **It's a Baby.**

Kaima looked at him incredulously. **A baby… boat?**

**What are you… no, a Fenton Baby Buoy. It's merhunting tech.** Danny spun around in a frantic circle, and just caught a glimpse of it behind the waves – the Mother Buoy. They had just activated his parents' defensive equipment, which was all currently online. **We have to get out of here. No, wait!**

Danny made to grab the BB, but it leaped out of his reach. He jumped at it again, and it persistently stayed about one foot away. **We have to turn that thing off!** he shouted in Kaima's head. **It** _ **is**_ **following us. It's going to lead them right to us!**

**Let me,** said Kaima. She narrowed her eyes, and for a second it didn't seem like anything was happening, but suddenly water burst through the top of the BB like a geyser. Seconds later, it started to sink.

**You** _ **have**_ **to teach me how to do that,** said Danny, impressed.

Kaima shook her head and pointed a shaky finger over his shoulder. **No time. They're here.**

Danny turned, and he saw it, the Fenton Family Merfolk Assault Craft thundering toward them. Kaima yanked him back under the waves.

The mermaid shoved the bag from the prison into Danny's arms. **Take this, and swim as fast as you can to the shore. Don't stop until you get there. I'll distract them.**

**What are you saying?** said Danny.

**I've done this before. I can do it again.** Kaima's grin trembled. Her hands shook on the top of the bag. **And Danny,** she said, **I know you don't like me, but I'm happy I got to meet you. I think we could have been friends.**

Danny didn't know how to respond, and he didn't get the chance. Kaima was already speeding away, faster than Danny could believe. **Go!** she shouted in his head, right before she shot to the surface, broke the waves, and jumped into the air right before his parents' eyes. Danny saw her dive down again and watched the trail of bubbles that showed she was swimming out to sea.

His parents took the bait.

Danny wanted to help, but there was nothing he could do; as it was, he wouldn't even be able to catch up to them. Instead, clutching the bag tightly, he swam to the shore. Using the Amity Lighthouse as a guide, he made his way to the northern end of the Fentonworks beach. He knew exactly where he needed to exit the water – that narrow strip of sand, that overhang of the cliff that formed a natural cave.

The water grew so shallow that Danny could have stood up, had he had legs. Danny raised his eyes out of the water, and he saw it, the cave. The area was deserted, Fentonworks out of sight somewhere to the south, no boats anywhere.

It felt like forever since he had seen land. It was so close.

_How are you supposed to breathe up here?_

Danny folded his tail in the sand under him and sat there, staring at the beach. He had made it this far, and now he couldn't leave the water for fear of suffocating on dry land. How messed up was that? He tried lifting his head above the water. His gills immediately began to strain; his chest grew tight; panic welled inside of him. Danny sunk back under the waves, relishing as the water flowed over his gills.

He thought back to the only other time he had made the transition from gills to lungs. How had he done it? At that time, it had felt like his throat was closing up, but after Danny struggled for a while, the barrier suddenly vanished. Like there was a plug on his airways.

Exactly _like there was a plug on your airways. And you unplugged it, somehow. That means you can do it again, right now._

Danny brought his nose up out of the water. His gills sucked in air and blew bubbles out into the water. He could already feel his body aching for oxygen. But he had to figure this out. How was he supposed to switch from gills to lungs? Danny closed his eyes, ordering his body to calm down. He told his gills to shut and stop trying to breathe, and they did so. He told his diaphragm to move, and it tried. There was a tugging in his throat, and a pressure. He tried again. His body was screaming for water, for air, for something. He tried again. At last –

_whoosh_. Cool ocean air flooded into Danny's nose and filled his lungs. He exhaled through his mouth in a huge stream of bubbles, and sucked in through his nose again. The air was sweet. It was the best thing he'd ever tasted.

Danny straightened, lifting his whole head and then his shoulders out of the water, still breathing in deep gulps of air. Turning around, he used his webbed hands to swim backward, until his tail was making a furrow in the sand, until his chest had cleared the surface, until he had to toss Kaima's bag onto the sand and drag himself backward with his hands. By the time he had gotten himself completely onto dry sand, his arms were trembling. He knew he should try to reach the cave, hide himself, but he couldn't move any further.

Exhausted, Danny collapsed on the sand, eyes closed, chest heaving. The wind was cold on his skin, but the sun was hot. Not even meaning to, Danny fell asleep.

When he woke up, the sun was sinking in the sky. Danny was completely dry, and he was human again. He sat up with a groan and spent a few minutes staring at his feet. He saw his toes, and he wiggled them, curled them and uncurled them. Without understanding why, he began to laugh.

By the time Danny had his shaky legs underneath him, he realized two things. One, he was badly sunburned after having lain on the beach naked for the entire afternoon. Two, he had lain on the beach _naked_ the entire afternoon. He didn't have any clothes.

_Crud_. Glancing around, he spotted Kaima's bag a few feet off. Thinking he could repurpose it as a grass skirt, he picked it up and began to dump its contents out onto the beach.

A few glass balls tumbled out first, landing in the sand with dull 'thunk's. Each was filled with the poison Kaima had used against the guards. There were five in total, and Danny was glad that none had broken open when he dumped them out.

Whatever else was in the bag was a little stuck. Danny shook the bag harder, and was shocked when what fell out was none other than the indestructible Fenton Wetsuit. Like a wet noodle, it flopped onto the sand in a tangle of wet sleeves and pant legs, followed by his boots and gloves.

_Dad wasn't kidding. I swam into the middle of the ocean, got captured by merfolk headhunters, was thrown in prison, escaped said prison, and narrowly escaped being hunted by my own parents, and this thing survived all of it._ He was going to have to start giving his parents' inventions more credit.

The suit was pretty damp, but Danny would rather his skin change colors than have to walk home in the nude. He decided to just wear the pants, tying the arms around his waist, and stuffed everything else back in Kaima's bag, including the balls of poison which he had no idea what to do with.

Walking felt bizarre. It made sense, after having finally gotten used to swimming with a fish tail. Danny hadn't expected walking to feel unfamiliar, though. His knees trembled, and stumbling through the sand felt so inefficient after having just covered miles and miles by swimming. Danny shook his head furiously as though he could shake the thought out. He was never going to set foot – yes, _foot_ , not fin – in the water again. End of story.

Ten minutes later, he reached the lab. The Boat had not returned. Danny only hoped that was because his parents had been unsuccessful in catching Kaima. Surely if they had caught her, his mom and dad would have brought Kaima straight back to the lab to put into their holding tank. Surely.

An elevator ride and a trek up the stairs brought Danny to his bedroom. He closed the door behind him, changed into jeans and a T-shirt, and collapsed face-first onto his bed with a groan.

Jazz barged in a minute later. "I thought I heard you sneaking in."

Danny heard her voice with his ears, not in his head, but it didn't make it any less obnoxious. "Ever hear of a thing called 'knocking'?" he grumbled into his pillow, voice rough after being on vacation for two days. "You should try it sometime."

She ignored this. "Just because you spent the whole weekend at Tucker's, don't expect that I picked up your chores. All the dishes are downstairs growing mold and waiting on _you_." With that, she turned around and left, not even bothering to close the door again.

"Good to see you, too," he muttered into his pillow. "Thanks for asking about my weekend. Not like I almost died or anything…" Despite this, Danny smiled. Things here were exactly as he had left them. From now on, life could go back to normal.

He was home.

Downstairs, the doorbell rang, but Danny was already falling unconscious again. Whoever was at Fentonworks, it had nothing to do with him.

At least, that's what he thought.


	10. Chapter 10

" _It's jarring to go from one amazing experience to another that feels ordinary. I don't quite know how to explain it. You see the uniqueness of what you've been doing, and disassociating yourself from it and going back to the 'normal' life is tough."_

\- Nat Wolff

* * *

Danny found Tucker the next morning pacing at the corner near his house. When he saw Danny, the technophile rushed over exclaiming, "Dude! You're alive!"

Danny inclined his head and spread his arms. "I'm alive."

"I mean, I thought you'd be fine," babbled Tucker, "but then I thought, 'That's the Ocean'. The _Ocean_."

"Uh, yeah…?"

"Like with a capital 'O', Ocean! There are sharks! Man-eating merpeople! The Kraken!"

Danny laughed. "The _Kraken?_ "

"What? We have mermaids, why not the Kraken? Why not Cthulhu, while we're at it?"

Shaking his head, Danny clapped a hand down on his friend's shoulder and said, "I missed you, Tuck." It felt like months since they had seen each other, not two days.

"C'mon, spill! What happened? Did you find her? And… why do you look like you lost a fight with a tanning bed?"

"It's really that bad?" said Danny, wincing.

"Dude, if 'sunburn' was a Crayola color, it'd be the color of your face." Tucker rummaged in his pant pockets and produced Danny's cell phone, which he dropped into his friend's hands. "Okay, now tell me everything."

Danny took a deep breath, shoved his sunburned hands into his pockets, and as they walked to Neptune High, told Tucker the entire story – minus some of his more angst-ridden and useless moments. By the time they had reached the doors of the school, Tucker's eyes were twinkling in the same way they had when he held his first VR headset.

He tried sympathy, but they could both tell that it was forced. "Wow, man, I'm sorry she couldn't fix you…" Danny waited for Tucker to say what he really thought; and didn't have to wait long. "But, don't you see how amazing this is? You have _powers_ , Danny! This proves it. Telepathy! Aqua…pathy! That one guy could shoot poison out of his wrists! Please tell me she at least taught you how to move water with your mind."

"Sorry, we were a little bit busy running for our lives."

"Don't you mean 'swimming' for your lives?" said Tuck.

" _Running_ ," said Danny. They had now reached his locker, but his hand froze on the handle. "I just had a premonition. And _no_ ," he added, when Tucker looked excited, "I didn't mean as a new mer-power. I just get the feeling I'm going to be hearing fish jokes for a long, long time."

"Not gonna stop," Tucker agreed. He tapped his temple. "As long as this baby is ticking, the jokes are going to keep on flowing. Flowing like a wave in the ocean."

Rolling his eyes, Danny gathered his books, and they elbowed through the crowd over to Tucker's locker. He didn't miss the stares he was receiving, or the way that girls were snickering behind their hands and pointing at him. He had put on a long-sleeved shirt that day, but he felt like he was glowing as brightly as a merperson. When would he have a week of school in which he didn't feel like a spectacle?

He was in danger of becoming _that_ kind of Fenton.

"If I'm going to be stuck like this, and it looks like I am," Danny said, trying to ignore the other students' blatant looks, "I think I should learn. The 'aquapathy' or whatever it's called. If I could do that, I could dry off instantly, and I'd never have to worry about people finding out about me."

"And imagine the sweet pranks you could pull," said Tucker.

"I just said I _didn't_ want people finding out about me."

"No, just think about it! You're in the Nasty Burger. The whole football team sits down with Mega Nasty Drinks. And _boom!_ "

Danny raised a brow. When he thought about it like that, it didn't sound like such a bad idea…

They walked into Lancer's classroom, and Danny slunk to his seat at the back. There were more snickers, and Dash looked like he was dying to break their temporary truce and call him a 'deep-fried Fenturd' or something.

Then the bell rang, and the first thing Lancer said was: "Alright, people, your 200-word reflections on the first three chapters of _The Grapes of Wrath_. Pass them to the front."

"No, no, _no_ , not again," Danny groaned. Another weekend, another missed assignment.

Samantha Manson chuckled as she passed her own paper forward. "Sucks to be you, tomato boy."

"Tucker, did you…?"

"Sorry, Danny," said Tucker, writing his name down and handing over his assignment. "I always do my homework. Even when you're, you know, doing you-know-what, you-know-where."

"It's really difficult to interpret that as anything other than dirty," Samantha informed them. "I was going to ask what happened, but I don't think I want to know."

Danny wanted to snap at her, or at Tucker, or both simultaneously, but Lancer started the class, so he did the next best thing – he sank into his seat and turned, if possible, an even darker shade of red.

Things were back to normal – if normal was being the butt of everyone's jokes and an abysmal student. That was fine, Danny preferred that to being up to his gills in danger at the bottom of the ocean. _Neck,_ he berated himself. _Up to your neck._

But, watching Tucker scribble notes down, listening to Lancer drone on about the book Danny hadn't even cracked open yet, trying himself to write down something coherent, he couldn't shake a feeling of disappointment. He'd just had an adventure doing the impossible, and survived, and wasn't this just… too normal?

* * *

"So, I was thinking," said Tucker come lunchtime.

"I know that tone of voice," said Danny. "You had an idea, didn't you?"

They were sitting at their usual table, eating Monday's usual mystery meatloaf – no one knew or wanted to ask what the mystery was – and the day had been utterly, well, usual. No one had bullied him (much), there had been no threats made on his life, he'd had no accidents with his merfolk side, and besides the scoldings and sour looks from his teachers about his incomplete assignments, nothing too unfortunate had happened.

It was like his weekend had not happened. It might as well have not happened.

Tucker smirked and slapped a flier down on the table. "There's a swim meet tomorrow night."

Danny nodded slowly. "And we care about this… why?"

"We care about this," said Tuck, "because all the pretty girls who aren't in cheerleading are on swim team. And you and me are going to be there tomorrow night to cheer them on."

"You're forgetting something, Tuck," said Danny. "Something really important."

Tucker took a large bite of the mysterious meat before saying a very muffled, "What?"

Danny leaned in close and said, **I can't go near water.**

Tucker sprayed meatloaf across the table. Unfortunately, Danny was in the line of fire, but it was worth it. While Danny wiped the half-masticated meat off his face, Tucker coughed, banged on his chest, took a long drink of soda, and slammed his cup back down. "Did you-?" he gasped.

**Just mind-speak?** said Danny, not moving his mouth except to smirk.

Tucker rubbed two fingers into his ears. "That is seriously unnerving. How are you doing that?"

**I'm just thinking heavy thoughts.**

"Well, would you cut it out?" Tucker shivered. "My brain feels violated." He took off his beret and rubbed the top of his head, cooing, "There there, it's okay…"

Danny snorted, but he switched back to using his vocal chords. "I thought you said my powers were, and I quote, 'Amazing'?"

"Yeah, that one more in theory than in practice, man."

Danny knew he should probably feel guilty – he knew he had been freaked out the first time Kaima spoke into his head – so why did he feel irritated instead? "Did you hear what I said, though? I can't go near water. And I definitely can't go to the pool."

"Right," Tucker sighed. "Fins."

"Fins," Danny said sternly. "From now on, I'm staying on dry land, Tuck. No beaches. No pools. No ponds. No puddles. I'm going to be all human, all the time."

He looked pretty put out, but Tucker said, "Fine. I'll go alone."

"I'm sorry, Tuck. That's just how it is."

Conversation was a little stilted for the rest of lunch. Danny brought up Doomed 2, asking if Tucker had gotten any further, but since they'd made a pact to do it together or not at all, and Danny had been out of commission for the last two weeks, of course Tucker hadn't.

"I think HPcthulhu13 already beat the final boss," said Tucker moodily.

"Ah," said Danny. "We'll, uh, catch up."

"Can you get on tonight?"

"Er…" Danny rubbed the back of his neck. "I should probably do a different kind of catching up tonight. Homework. Sorry…"

"No, no, that's cool," Tucker replied with all the dejection of a kicked puppy, making Danny feel like a complete jerk. "I get it."

The bell couldn't have rung sooner. Danny grabbed his tray, muttered, "See you in Spanish," and fled.

* * *

Danny reached home that afternoon in a sour mood. His sunburn hurt, his bruises hurt, he'd spent the day being laughed at, and to top it all off, no one knew or cared about what had happened to him.

He was being immature, like a little kid seeking attention, and he knew it. Still, he wished someone would acknowledge what he had been through. Even Tucker, who knew the whole truth of it, hadn't been able to offer more than a, "Wow, I'm glad you're okay," before going on like normal. He just wanted something to prove that everything he had done that weekend had been worth it. There was no way he had been forced to feel that terrified only for nothing to come of it.

Danny walked into Fentonworks with hunched shoulders and a gloomy expression, and was greeted by the last voice in the world he had expected or wanted to hear.

"Ah, Daniel!"

Danny stiffened and slowly turned. "Mr. Masters?"

Dressed in a pristine black suit, sitting on the couch with a tea cup in one hand and a saucer in the other, was the multi-billionaire friend of his parents, Fentonworks's monetary and ideological sponsor, Vlad Masters. It had been several years since Danny last saw the man, but there was no forgetting his distinctive silver hair and goatee, or the way he treated everyone around him like third-class citizens.

"Welcome home, Danny!" said Danny's mom cheerily, looking up from a portable monitor in her lap. Then: "What happened to your face?"

"Bad sunburn," he muttered. "Uh, what's going on?"

Jack, who was sitting beside Mr. Masters, slapped the man heartily on his back and nearly spilled his tea in the process. Oblivious to Mr. Masters's grimace, Jack said, "We told V-Man here about the recent spike in merfolk activity, and he flew all the way out here to give us a hand!"

"I arrived last night," said Vlad, sliding a few inches away from Jack, "but as there was no one here but Jasmine to greet me, I postponed my 'official' visit to this afternoon."

"We were just telling Vladdy," Jack went on, "that we think a merperson could be hiding near the shore of Amity Beach."

Danny would have turned pale if he could have. "Uh, what makes you say that?"

Maddie frowned and turned back to her monitor. She tapped at it with brisk fingers while she spoke. "We detected two merpeople near Buoy #9 yesterday. They destroyed one of our BBs, and we pursued one out to sea…"

"But the second one never left," concluded Masters, narrowing his eyes. "Did it?"

"You didn't, um, capture that one you were chasing yesterday, did you?" stammered Danny.

Jack slammed a fist into his lap. "No, no we did not. Darn thing has outswum us twice now. Danno, just so you know, it isn't often your folks are beaten. So I don't want you thinking any less of us."

Danny didn't think more or less of them; he just sighed, relieved. Kaima was okay. Who knew what kind of trouble she was in at home for springing him, but at least from the Fentons, she was safe.

"It'd be best if you and your friends stay away from the beach for now, sweetie," said Maddie.

He offered a shaky smile. "Who do you think you're talking to, Mom? Me and Tuck at the beach? Yeah right. I'm, uh, I'll be up in my room."

"Won't you join us for dinner, little badger?" said Vlad.

"Darn tootin', he'll join us for dinner," said Jack.

_Thanks, Dad,_ Danny glowered. He didn't trust himself to say anything else in the realm of polite, so he went straight up the stairs. He closed his door and fell back onto his bed. "Can this day get any worse?"

Staring at the ceiling, he worried his lip. Vlad Masters paid for the Fentons' technology, for their lab, for their beach, for _everything_ , but he never traveled out here from his mansion in Maryland. Danny couldn't tell if Mr. Masters even liked his parents; he obviously didn't like his dad. So why? Why now?

It _was_ the first time there had been any merperson activity in Amity Beach. Real, scientifically verifiable merpeople activity, not just the boat wrecks and missing people that Danny's parents blamed on merpeople. If Vlad Masters wanted revenge on merfolk as much as the Fentons, and everything about his history suggested he would, then of course he'd make an appearance when they found one.

_Wait a second_. Danny sat up and stared at his bedroom door; the adults' voices were no more than muffles downstairs. In the excitement yesterday, he'd forgotten about something. Mr. Masters was the one who told everyone that the research crew had been eaten by merfolk. _But Kaima said merfolk don't eat humans._

Kaima didn't necessarily know everything – what was she, like, twelve? But this seemed like a pretty major point to be mistaken about.

Something was weird about someone's story. The question was whose.

_Does it matter?_ one part of Danny wondered. So what if merpeople's habit of occasionally devouring marine biologists was kept secret from a little girl? Or conversely, so what if his parents and Mr. Masters were attacked by some _other_ mythical sea creature able to control water with its mind? It didn't affect _him_.

Except that his parents were building a submarine to go and exterminate all of the merfolk, and if the merfolk were not the ones who attacked them in the first place, a whole people, including Kaima, would be slaughtered for nothing. Danny's time with them hadn't been pleasant, but as much as he didn't like them, they didn't deserve _that_.

Danny rubbed his hands through his hair in frustration. "This isn't my problem," he muttered to his bedroom.

Regardless, at dinner that night he found himself asking, "Mr. Masters?"

The man in question paused cutting his steak and looked over. "Yes, Daniel?"

"I, um, never got to hear the story about when you were captured by merpeople. So... yeah, would you mind telling me what happened?"

"Danny!" his mother scolded. "You know Vlad doesn't like to talk about that!"

"Maddie, dear," said the billionaire smoothly, "we can't blame the little badger for his curiosity." Eyes tight at their edges, he went on to say, "But your mother is right. That was a traumatic time in my life, and I would rather not bring it up, especially not at the dinner table."

Danny bristled at the demeaning nickname Mr. Masters had been calling him since he was two. "But you're sure it was merpeople, right?"

Mr. Masters chuckled. "Now, I think I would be certain about something as fundamental as that, don't you?"

Jazz interrupted just then to ask Mr. Masters about his recent interview with Genius Magazine and how he felt about being on the cover as the nation's most eligible bachelor for women geniuses. And as easily as that, Danny's question was belittled and shut down. Maybe it had been answered, but it certainly didn't feel that way. Danny frowned into his plate, pushed broccoli around with his fork, and said nothing else for the rest of the meal.

* * *

"Are you still going to the swim meet?" asked Danny the next day on their way to school. He had finished all of his homework the night before, his sunburn was turning into a tan, and the sky was clear. Overall, Tuesday was looking to be a good day, and would have been, had Mr. Masters not announced that he'd be staying in town for the whole week, not just one night. At least Mr. Masters was staying at a hotel instead of in the Fenton Guest Room, but that was a small comfort. Chances were that Danny would be seeing a lot of the fruitloop over the next few days.

"Yeah," said Tucker sullenly. "I'm still going. Alone."

"No, not alone," said Danny. "I'm going, too. Anything to get out of another dinner with _Vlad Masters_."

"Hang on," said Tucker. "Vlad Masters is at your house? Right now? _The_ Vlad Masters?"

"Not _right now_ right now, but yeah, Mr. Masters is in town, spurring my parents on in their quest for revenge against merpeople." Danny shoved his hands into his pockets and glowered at the sidewalk, kicking rocks that he imagined were Mr. Masters's face.

"I don't get it," said Tucker. "What do you have against him?"

"You've never met him, Tuck. He's a real creep. He has this sickly sweet way of talking down to you, and no one in my family seems to see it at all. And something's just… _off_ … about him. I don't know what it is. I get the feeling he's hiding something, or taking advantage of my parents, or… What I _do_ know is that I am not doing a repeat of last night. I'd rather risk turning into a fish boy in front of the whole school."

"Great!" said Tuck. "I have my wingman back!"

* * *

"Or, not so great," Tucker amended. "I think I would have been better off alone. You look ridiculous. _We_ look ridiculous."

"You wanted me to come, Tuck," said Danny. "Wish granted."

Danny was not going to take any chances that evening. He was wearing his Fenton Poncho, a waterproof jacket, waterproof pants, rubber boots, and underneath everything, his Fenton Wetsuit and gloves. Most students sitting on the bleachers were wearing shorts, T-shirts, and sandals.

"Yeah, seriously rethinking that," said Tucker. "At this rate, I'm not going to find a girlfriend until I graduate. And you, man, are never going to find a girlfriend, period. You _do_ realize you're wearing your Fenton Wetsuit in public, right?"

"No one can see it!" Danny protested, but he pulled his hands underneath the poncho.

"It's the principle," said Tucker.

Danny slouched, repeating the phrase _I'm not becoming my parents_ a few times in his head. "Just shut it, and let's do what we came here to do."

"How 'bout I do all the cheering, and you try not to draw attention to yourself? Or you know, _more_ attention?"

"Gladly."

Danny watched as the swimmers from each school lined up for the first race. Neptune High's were wearing blue suits striped with gold, while Bakersville High's wore mahogany. Danny almost didn't recognize her, without the dark clothes or dark make-up and with her black hair in a cap, but Samantha Manson definitely recognized him. Like many others that evening, she was giving him an incredulous stare.

Danny figured they were back on speaking terms, so he offered a small smile, and waved one of his black-gloved hands. Samantha rolled her eyes and pulled her goggles down.

Scratch that. Whatever relationship they had as desk-neighbors in English class, which wasn't particularly good in the first place, it obviously didn't stretch into the real world.

Danny frowned and stared into the pool instead. The water there was bright blue, divided into several lanes by white ropes, and lapped against the sides with gentle 'glup-glup's, audible even over the auditorium-echo of everyone's voices. Looking at it, Danny felt his muscles tense, his heart rate increase, and his head start to swim, though he wasn't sure why. Sitting at the top of the bleachers, as far from the water as it was possible to be in this room, he wasn't in any danger of getting wet. A distant part of his mind wanted to look away, but the longer he stared, the harder it became to stop. Soon he could hardly blink, much less turn his head.

The referee blew the whistle, the girls dived into the pool, and the first heat began. The 'glup-glup's became the rapid splashing of arms and legs, and classmates cheered shrilly.

To Danny, it didn't matter who was ahead. Suddenly, his heart was pounding in his chest. Every time a swimmer kicked the water, the plunge was as loud in his ears as though he were hovering a foot above the surface of the pool. He could practically feel the waves of the pool licking over his own skin. His breaths roared through his nose, the air pungent with chlorine and humidity.

He fought through this distinctive discomfort and tried to focus on the races. They dragged, or they passed in seconds, and by the end of the swim meet, Danny had no idea who the victors were or how much time had actually passed. All he knew was that he needed to get out of there. As soon as he registered the meet was over, he stood and rushed to the doors, wincing when his rubber boots splashed through puddles on the floor.

In the hallway between the rest of the school and the pool, he ripped off the poncho and leaned against the wall, taking deep breaths as he waited for Tucker to catch up. _What_ was _that?_

"Hey, man, are you okay?" Tucker ducked out of the crowd of students and parents who were leaving the pool and stood by the wall with Danny. "Did something happen? Did you…?"

Danny shook his head. "I think… I've still got aquaphobia…"

Tucker looked dubious, and Danny didn't blame him. Sure, Danny had never liked the water and had always felt nervous around it, but he never freaked out just looking at a swimming pool. Tucker had been his friend long enough to know that. "Really? I mean, you were spacing out the entire time."

"It's nothing," Danny insisted. His heartbeat was slowing down, and his muscles were gradually relaxing. "I'm fine, I swear. Just, no more swim meets, okay?"

"Sure," said Tucker. "No more swim meets."

When Danny had finally calmed down, he said, "Sorry I ruined another of your get-girl-quick schemes, Tuck."

"Nah, it's cool," said the techo-geek, leaning back against the wall, an easy smile across his face. "I still got to look, and that was totally worth it. Ready to go home?"

Danny checked his watch. "Yeah, I think it's probably safe."

Danny switched his rubber boots out for sneakers and shoved them with the Fenton Poncho and Fenton Gloves into his bag. He felt a whole lot less conspicuous and a whole lot less 'Fenton' without them, and when he and Tuck emerged from the building, putting the pool far behind them, only then did he fully relax.

The night was clear but cool; it was already half-way through September, and summer was almost over. Crickets chirped loudly, cars rushed over the highway in the distance. Somehow, over all this Danny could still hear the waves of the ocean. He wondered if he had always been able to hear them, and only just now noticed.

Tucker shared his impressions of the swim meet, i.e., which girls looked the hottest in swimsuits, and which girls he thought wouldn't but had, or vice versa. Danny listened patiently and through this learned that Neptune High _had_ won most of the races, and Samantha Manson had come in first in every event she entered.

"I knew she was a good swimmer, but that was ridiculous," enthused Tucker. "Everyone else was eating her bubbles. No one stood a chance."

_I bet I could outswim her,_ Danny thought absently, listening to the waves crashing against the beach in the distance.

He left Tucker at his friend's front door and walked the last couple of blocks back to Fentonworks. He arrived just as the front door was opening, and promptly hid behind a bush. Peeking between the leaves, he watched Vlad Masters say goodnight to his parents and the door shut behind him.

Danny waited for the billionaire to walk to a private limousine, but looking up and down the street, he realized he didn't see one. He didn't see a taxi; he didn't see any car that didn't belong there. As he wondered at this, Vlad Masters walked, not down the street and away from Fentonworks, but straight to the wooden staircase that would lead to the beach.

_Don't tell me he came by yacht,_ thought Danny, rolling his eyes. That would figure.

But if Mr. Masters had a boat down there, why wouldn't he have just ridden the elevator down? He _owned_ the lab; surely he could come and go to it as he pleased. Something wasn't right here.

Danny waited until Mr. Masters's head was out of sight before coming out from behind the bush. He kept to the shadows, glad that his clothes were dark, and crept to the top of the staircase. He set his bag down against a wooden post and carefully climbed down to the first landing. There, he peeked over the edge.

Vlad Masters had already made it halfway down the staircase. He walked with a practiced step, so that no boards creaked and his feet were silent. It was a suspicious way to walk around outside of a friend's house. Danny looked down to the beach, to the dock, and besides the Boat and some of the smaller Fenton vessels, found the dock empty of anything Mr. Masters should have had anything to do with.

Slowly, Danny descended the steps down the cliff-side. A thick fog was rolling across the surface of the ocean, right toward the Fentonworks beach in the otherwise clear night. Danny stopped about halfway down the staircase and hid himself behind a post, where he could clearly watch whatever Mr. Masters was doing.

The billionaire, in his perfect suit and glossy black shoes, walked through the sand to the edge of the tide. He stopped there, removed his phone from the inside of his suit jacket, tapped the screen a few times with his fingers, and then replaced it. The fog came closer and closer to the beach, and Danny realized, shivering, that the wind was blowing east that night – directly against the fogbank.

A minute later, the fog rolled onto the beach, right over Mr. Masters, engulfing him and obscuring him entirely from sight.

Then, it changed directions and went back out to sea.

It emptied out of the beach like some creeping creature, and when it did, left nothing behind. The waves continued to lap at an empty beach.

Mr. Masters was gone.


	11. Chapter 11

" _Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days."_

\- Benjamin Franklin

* * *

Danny stared hard at the glass, eyes tight. The water inside rippled, and stilled. Again it rippled, and again it stilled, like there was a T-Rex approaching Fentonworks. Then, it puckered at its center, and plucked, and-

"Danny, sweetie, are you okay?"

He jerked backward. "What? Huh?"

"You were staring into space," said his mother, and Danny realized everyone at the kitchen table was now looking at him. "Is there something bothering you?"

He shook his head, blinking hard. "No, nothing. I was, uh, thinking about a… math problem." Inside, he winced. That was definitely one of the lamest excuses he had ever come up with.

"Maybe one of us can help you with that?" suggested Mr. Masters, and Danny realized just how bad this excuse was, surrounded on all sides by genius scientists and one soon-to-be genius scientist.

"Thanks, but I forgot most of the numbers. I'm sure I can figure it out later." He blushed, and went back to eating. A second later, Mr. Masters picked up the glass Danny had been trying to knock over with the force of his mind and drained every last drop from it.

_Darn it,_ he thought. _Now what?_

The entire day, and most of the night too, Danny hadn't been able to stop thinking about what he had seen. At first he thought he had been hallucinating, but when he'd gone down to the beach to look around, the evidence all pointed to something that should have been impossible. He had followed Mr. Masters's footprints through the sand, right up to the tide, and saw where they continued straight into the water and disappeared.

Unnerved, Danny looked up at the black ocean, glittering in the moonlight, expecting to see Vlad Masters's silver hair bobbing out of the waves at any second. There was nothing. Even the fog was gone.

Somehow, Mr. Masters had walked into the ocean and vanished.

Danny didn't know how long he stood around waiting for the billionaire to reappear before he gave up and went home.

Neither did he know when the thought first entered his head, or when it solidified into a hunch, and then a theory, and then a certainty. Maybe it was when Mr. Masters had appeared at Fentonworks the next day unscathed, like nothing had happened. There was only one explanation:

Vlad Masters was just like him.

It was the only thing that made sense. At some point, maybe when he was captured and held hostage those twenty years ago, a merperson had done to him exactly what Kaima had done to Danny and turned him half-merfolk. Maybe that was why he sought revenge now. Or maybe he was just looking for a cure. Who knew the reasons he was hunting merfolk?

Danny just needed to prove it.

The adults went back to their conversation.

"I simply don't understand," said Maddie, twirling her fork pensively. "We've deployed the BBs twice since then, checked and rechecked all of the buoys, done a thorough sweep up and down the coast, and found-"

"Absolutely nothing," grumbled Jack.

"I'm _certain_ there was a second intruder," Maddie insisted. "The BB caught it on camera!"

Danny nearly knocked his plate into his lap. "It did what now?" Since when did the Baby Buoys have cameras on them?

"Photographed 'em!" said Jack enthusiastically. "The Baby got their pictures clear as day, right before they murdered it. Died a hero, it did." The big man sniffed and wiped away a tear.

Danny went cold. That BB had been a foot away from them, and he'd stuck his whole head out of the water. _Like a dimwit_.

"That doesn't solve our problem, though," said Maddie. "We followed the female back to sea, but the buoys never registered the male exiting our perimeter. What if it's still in here somewhere?"

"I'm sure you'll find it," said Mr. Masters in a conspicuously syrupy voice - to Maddie, and only Maddie. "If anyone here is capable of doing so, it's you."

Danny frowned. _Wait_ … _did_ _he just…_ flirt _… with my mom?_

"We really appreciate you taking the time to check our equipment, Vlad," said Maddie, oblivious to this.

"It is an honor, my dear. It's been too long."

_No, he's totally flirting with my mom. Gross!_

Danny didn't know whether to feel relieved or repulsed that Vlad Masters might also be half-merfolk. On the one hand, it'd be good to know he wasn't a total one-of-a-kind freak. On the other, he would hate for his only comrade, the only person in the world who could understand what he was going through and help him out, to be this guy.

He glanced at Jazz to confirm that he wasn't going crazy and Mr. Masters really was flirting with their mom, right in front of their dad's nose. His sister was wearing a look of revulsion, more than what could be attributed to a conversation about merhunting, and when she caught him looking, she raised her brows at Danny in a meaningful way. He nodded very slightly and shuddered just enough for her to see. She nodded back.

It was easy to talk to a sibling without using words, and they didn't even need mind-speak.

Danny cast his eyes around the table, looking for some other tool he could use. Everyone else's glasses were too far away… His gaze landed on his own. _Good thing I've always been a klutz_.

He quickly polished off his plate, took it and his still-full glass into his arms, and as he walked past Mr. Masters to the kitchen sink, very deliberately stumbled and dumped the water right into the billionaire's face.

He jumped back out of the splash zone and waited.

And waited.

And as Vlad Masters did nothing more than begin to sop up the water with his handkerchief, Danny's jaw dropped. "What…but you…why aren't you…?"

"Danny!" Maddie Fenton scolded, leaping to her feet and rushing to fetch a towel from one of the kitchen cabinets. "At least apologize. Where are your manners, young man?"

"It's quite alright," said Vlad, his hair dripping water on the floor. He looked up at Danny and smirked, eyes narrowing almost imperceptibly. "What harm is a little water, eh Daniel?"

Danny felt the hand that clutched the glass itching, and glancing down saw it starting to turn white where the water had run down the side of the glass. He quickly wiped his hand on his jeans, turned to put everything in the sink, mumbled an apology, and rushed from the room.

"I'm so sorry, Vlad, he's never been like this," he heard his mother saying.

"Think nothing of it," the man replied, and that was all Danny heard before he reached his bedroom and closed himself inside.

He looked down at his left hand, at the swath of pearly white skin there. No one had seen, right? _Right?_

Trembling, Danny sat down on the edge of his bed and stared at his hand, watching the skin fade back to human pink. He couldn't believe it. Nothing. He'd doused Vlad Masters in water, and absolutely nothing had happened. Was he wrong? Was Mr. Masters not part-mer after all?

Then how did he vanish into the fog like that?

* * *

"Maybe he's a vampire?" suggested Tucker as they left school Thursday.

Danny stared back, not amused. "You're not taking this seriously, Tuck." They'd been discussing Mr. Masters's disappearing act on and off for the whole day, and each of Tucker's suggestions was more ludicrous than the one before.

"Danny, come on, this is Vlad Masters you're talking about. He's one of the richest and most successful people in the world. That's like asking me to believe that Gandhi was actually Bigfoot."

"Weren't you the one telling me you believed in the Kraken? And just how is this much harder to believe than the fact that Vlad Masters was kidnapped off of a boat twenty years ago by giant water tentacles and held hostage for a month while his shipmates were eaten by cannibalistic fish people?"

Tucker took a deep breath, preparing to argue, and then let it go in a 'whoosh'. "Okay, when you put it like that…"

"Tucker, I'm telling you, something is not right about that guy."

"Danny, no offense, and I'm not even saying you're wrong-"

"Just the fact that you're saying this means you think that I'm wrong."

"-but you are kind of paranoid," finished Tucker, wincing sympathetically.

"I'm not paranoid!" argued Danny. A few people walking near them hushed and hurried away, and so Danny lowered his voice and repeated, "I'm not paranoid."

"Danny, my friend," said Tuck, "you are a lot of things, and paranoid is definitely one of them. So, deliberately changing the topic, you wanna go to the Nasty Burger?"

Danny hefted his backpack on his shoulders and said, "I'm not in the mood. I'm just going to go home. I'll talk to you later." Without waiting for Tucker to protest, he hurried on ahead and wasn't entirely surprised when Tucker didn't bother trying to catch up.

He knew he should have felt guilty, or worried, or something. He and Tuck never fought, yet this whole week they'd been at odds. He was just tired of Tucker treating everything like it was a joke.

He hadn't even tried telling Tucker about the rest of it. For example, the dreams he had been having.

The last two nights, since what happened at the swim meet, Danny had been having flashbacks to his time in the ocean while he slept. The dreams themselves weren't frightening. When he woke up, he could never remember more than the feeling of warm water surrounding him, cool currents rushing underneath, light sparkling far ahead, and weightlessness like he was floating in outer space. It was calm, peaceful; it was disappointing to have to leave them.

The only times he'd had dreams about the ocean before now had been dreams of drowning in black and frigid water, to wake up gasping and covered in a cold sweat in his bed. What disturbed Danny now was the fact that he wasn't scared by these dreams at all. More than that was the disconcerting feeling when he woke up: not until he moved them did he remember that he had legs.

There were other things. No matter where he was, he could point to the ocean. He'd never had any sense of the cardinal directions before, but now he always knew where east was, because that was the direction of the Atlantic. In general, he was becoming more and more sensitive to water – salt, fresh, chlorinated. He knew how many water bottles were in a classroom without looking. He could tell if the school pool was being used by cocking his head and listening carefully. He knew if the guy next to him was sweating more than usual.

All of it had him a little on edge. What was happening with Vlad Masters was just the tip of this iceberg. So, if Tuck couldn't even take that much seriously, how was Danny to expect him to understand the rest of it?

Danny reached Fentonworks and without thinking about it wandered over to the beach stairs. Dropping his backpack at his feet, he leaned on the wooden railing and looked out at his old enemy, the ocean. In the late afternoon sun, it was deep blue, the waves tipped white and the currents glinting golden in the sun. Clouds left black shadows on the surface. The Fentonworks beach was empty, like always, but further down the coast, Danny could see beachgoers taking advantage of the last few days of warm weather.

There was a gnawing in his chest. His heart began to beat more loudly in his ears. His limbs were growing shaky. It was the Neptune High pool all over again.

He lowered his forehead onto the rail. "What's wrong with me?"

Just then, the staircase began to shudder. At first, Danny just furrowed his brows but didn't look up. But the shaking got worse. Annoyed, and a little worried that the wooden staircase was finally giving up the ghost, Danny raised his head and looked around.

It was then that something wrapped around his legs and pulled.

Danny's back slammed into the wooden landing, and suddenly he was dangling upside-down in midair several dozen feet above the beach. Gasping for breath, scrambling to grab hold of anything, Danny saw _it_.

Hanging on to the scaffolding of the staircase with seven of its eight legs was the largest octopus Danny had ever seen. Its head alone was the size of a compact car, its body like a circus tent, its legs like eight-inch-thick, suction-cupped cables. It was bright red; it was angry; it was holding Danny in its tight, suction-y grip.

Danny stared. His first thought was – _The Kraken._ And then he screamed. "Ahhhhhhh!"

That only made it angrier. With its massive tentacle, it shook Danny from side to side and up and down until Danny not only stopped screaming but thought he was going to puke. It passed Danny to another tentacle, which wrapped around his waist. Then, Danny hanging limp in its grasp, it started to scale the staircase back to the beach.

Not a minute later, they reached the sand. The giant octopus held Danny aloft with one of its legs and used its others to whirl across the sand toward the water.

Danny regained enough of his senses to start struggling again. He beat his fists on the tentacle around his middle, to no effect, unless he had wanted it to squeeze him tighter, in which case it would have been a total success. The octopus reached the water, and Danny knew instinctively that if it got back into the ocean, he was a goner; so, he did what anyone should do when they're being grabbed by a hostile entity.

He sunk his teeth in.

The octopus let go, and did so by flinging him several feet through the air. Danny landed hard on his back in the wet, well-packed sand. The air was forcefully evacuated from his lungs, and a second later a wave came in and swept over his head, shoulders, all the way to his waist, and back out again. The change happened fast – pins-and-needles tingling all over his upper body, a dull ache filling his bones.

When he tried to breathe again and couldn't, at first he wasn't sure if it was because he had been winded or because he had gills again.

Either way, he didn't have time to sit and think about it. He rolled away just in time for the octopus to not grab him again, but wasn't so lucky when its second and third arms reached for him. They lifted him by one leg and one arm into the air.

Danny gasped, and he could breathe again. His white hair was plastered across his forehead and into his eyes, so he shook it away to get a better look at the monster that was about to dismember him.

_I don't care what it thinks, I'm not about to be killed by the Kraken._

Danny thrashed, but it did no good. The octopus just squeezed him tighter and glared at him with its huge, horizontal pupils. Frantic, Danny looked around, looking for anyone who could help him – _where are my parents with the Fenton Harpoons when you need them?_ – or anything he could use to escape.

The ocean crashed against the octopus's lower body. That's when Danny knew.

Danny could feel it in his heart, the tide pushing and pulling. He could also feel the octopus in his arm and leg, but it was just pulling. His joints were starting to strain.

Danny squeezed his eyes shut. He saw an image of the Fenton Baby Buoy that Kaima had destroyed, the water shooting like a geyser from its deck. He felt the waves come in, and felt them go out. The next time they came, he opened his eyes, and was able to watch as a spear of ocean water shot up from under the octopus and came out the top of its head.

Screeching horribly, it dropped Danny into the foot of water below and began to thrash, throwing up wet sand and arcs of its own, blackish blood. It thundered like this for a few seconds, then crashed to the ground, and finally stilled.

Danny scrambled off of the wet sand before the water came back, but he could already feel the damage done. His feet were growing, pressing against the insides of his water-logged sneakers, and his legs hurt worse with every passing second, which probably had something to do with the fact he was wearing jeans while his tail was trying to form. Shaking, he tore off his shoes and tugged off his jeans and boxers. Before he'd gotten the clothes fully off, his legs all the way to his knees had started fusing together.

He realized, too late, that he had never been awake for this before.

He tried not to think about it too much. It was clear what was happening. His skin, after becoming black scales, would attach from one leg to the other, and only when all of this was a single piece did the bones and muscles start to shift.

It wasn't painful, per se, but it was deeply uncomfortable. It also happened much more quickly than Danny thought it would. Between getting drenched in the tide (and some octopus guts, to be honest), it didn't take more than two minutes to completely shift.

Then it was over, and Danny was once again a merperson lying on the Fentonworks beach, only this time not one hundred feet from the entrance to the lab. Not to mention the giant octopus corpse nearby.

"Perfect," he huffed, and fell back in the sand.

After a couple of minutes of lying there and being, if not happy, at least relieved and a little shocked to be alive, Danny dug his phone out of his pants, discovered that it still worked, and called Tucker.

He answered after three rings, sounding grumpy: " _What is it, Danny?"_

"Tuck?" said Danny. "Hey, I'm sorry about earlier. You were right about the Kraken. Um… think you could help me out?"

" _So_ now _you want my help… Wait, what do you mean, the Kraken?"_

"It's a long story," said Danny. "Please, Tuck. I'm on the beach in front of the lab, and I'm having a bit of a situation."

" _What kind of situation?"_

Danny sighed. "What kind of situation do you think?"

"… _Oh!_ That _kind of situation. Why didn't you say so?"_

"So, yeah, time is of the essence?"

" _Got it! Be right there!"_

Danny hung up the phone and decided to see if he still remembered how to move his tail, only to discover that he was already transitioning back to legs, a slightly less uncomfortable process than the other way around. The hot sand on one side and the sun on the other were drying him quickly. It wasn't long before he was able to put his boxers on and stand back up again.

He didn't quite understand what he watched happen next.

* * *

" _That's_ the Kraken?" said Tucker, poking it with a stick.

"I swear, it was a lot bigger earlier."

"This thing's the size of a Chihuahua."

The ocean waves had washed away the blood. They had flattened out the sand. There was nothing to prove that the pathetic ball of tentacles lying on the beach had once been the size of a mini-van.

Except maybe…

"Look!" said Danny, pulling up his shirt. Under the damp fabric, his skin was still white, but it was also one other thing. Bruised. Golf-ball sized, sucker-shaped, purpling bruises. "I was obviously not attacked by a Chihuahua-pus earlier, Tuck. I'm telling you, it shrunk."

The bruises seemed to do the trick. Tucker was thoroughly impressed, if also a bit sickened.

"Where did it come from?" he asked, now two shades paler.

Danny shrugged. "I didn't see it until it was right on top of me. Or right under me."

"I can't believe your parents' tech didn't register a giant octopus swimming toward Amity Beach."

"I think it's only meant to track merpeople. Which this wasn't. And if I hadn't figured out how to use my powers just now, I would have been dead meat."

Tucker perked up. "You used your powers to fight the Kraken? Dude, you've got to show me!"

Despite everything, despite the aches and lingering terror and fast-crashing energy levels, Danny smiled. "Yeah, I don't see why not. Alright, stand back."

Dutifully, Tucker backed away about five feet as Danny approached the water. At the edge of the wet sand, he spread his bare feet, cracked his knuckles, held out his hands, and when the waves hit the beach, he willed a wall of water to rise into the air.

The water ignored him and flowed back out to sea.

"Uh… hang on…" Frowning, Danny readjusted his stance and tried it again, but this time imagined something smaller, just another spear of water shooting into the air.

Nothing.

"Are you building suspense, or was that it?" came Tucker's voice.

Danny dropped his arms and stomped back through the sand. "I don't get it! It worked before!"

"I believe you. You did it last week when it was raining, too," said Tuck. "Maybe you have to feel threatened? Want me to attack you?"

"Tuck, the last thing I want right now is to be attacked. _Again._ " Seriously, how many people and/or creatures had attacked him since the start of school? "Actually, the only thing I want right now is to get as far away from here as I can." His stomach chose then to grumble loudly. "And apparently to eat something."

Tucker grinned. "I know where we can do both of those things."

* * *

They squeezed into a corner booth at the Nasty Burger with four Monster Nasty Meals and two Mega Nasty Drinks. Danny was still a bit covered in sand, but he had gotten some fresh clothes and flip-flops before coming.

They both ate an entire burger and an entire carton of fries before either said a word – eating was serious business, after all.

"You should train," said Tucker, slurping at his Mega Nasty Drink. "In case this happens again."

"I don't think this is going to happen again."

"Did you think it was going to happen this time?"

"…"

Tucker nodded smugly. "That's my point."

Danny heaved a sigh and slouched into the booth. Some of the last of the sand sprinkled onto the seat and floor. "Okay. Yeah, I should train. It's not like I can go down to the beach and practice whenever I want, though. Not only are my parents on high-alert right now, there are two mermen headhunters who would probably like to throw me back in prison. Not to mention whatever shady thing Mr. Masters is up to."

"Just because you don't like him doesn't mean it has to be shady," Tucker said, ever the peace-keeper.

Screwing up his face, Danny reluctantly agreed. "I guess… Anyway, the beach is off limits, and somehow I think my bathtub isn't a much better option."

They both paused a moment to imagine Danny as a merperson stuffed into a five-foot-long porcelain tub. Tucker snorted, and Danny threw a French fry at him.

After a small war involving several potato projectiles and one angry cashier, Tucker frowned thoughtfully at the table and said –

"So, what about the pool?"


	12. Chapter 12

" _There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away."_

\- Sherman Alexie

* * *

Danny and Tucker strolled through the deserted hallways of Neptune High, with exaggerated casualness to deter any thoughts that they might be sneaking around. Because they definitely weren't sneaking. It didn't matter that the majority of the student body was currently at the football field watching the Narwhals pound the Sea Lions, and they were walking farther and farther in the opposite direction. Their walk said it all: 'We're supposed to be here'.

…at least, according to Tucker it did.

"We're going to get caught," hissed Danny, hefting his duffel bag on his shoulder.

"The school's unlocked," said Tucker, for the fifth time. "Technically we're not breaking any rules."

"I wonder if Lancer would agree… Can you get detention for looking suspicious? And are you _sure_ the pool's going to be empty?"

"Danny, do you know anyone who loiters outside of girls' locker rooms more than me?"

"I don't know if I should be happy or disturbed to say it, but no, I don't."

Tucker tapped his noggin. "I've got all their schedules memorized. Besides, the swim team moves as a group. They only swim during their class or afterschool practices, and then they leave. Plus, tonight's a football game. Trust me, no one will be there."

It turned out that Tucker was right. When they reached the swimming pool, the lights were out, and Danny half expected for the room to be locked. They were able to enter without any problems and without encountering a soul.

The room was dim, the only light coming from the moon through the tall upper windows and the bright fluorescents in the hallway. Nearby, the water slapped against the pool walls, a shadowy thing. A shiver rolled over Danny's skin.

Tucker wandered down the wall near the door until he came to a control panel. After checking with a flashlight on his PDA, he found a switch to turn on the pool lights. Shortly after, bright yellow lights blinked on about three feet underwater, and the water glowed bright turquoise.

"We're definitely breaking some rules," Danny muttered.

"Only if we get caught," said Tucker.

"Yeah, not sure that's how rules work," said Danny, eyeing the pool. He sighed, walked over to the first row of bleachers and set his bag down. "But I've got to do this, don't I? The sooner I learn these powers, the sooner I'll stop changing every time I get splashed."

"And you'll also be ready the next time you fight a giant octopus."

"…sure. That too." Though he really doubted _that_ would ever happen again. He was trying to forget it had happened once.

Danny took some towels out of his bag and began to undress. He kicked off his shoes and was just pulling his shirt over his head when Tucker said, "By the way, how are you planning to breathe?"

Danny gave his friend a funny look. "Um, so there's this thing where I grow gills in water…"

"Yeah, but you know chlorine kills fish. Right?"

His hands froze on the button to his jeans. "It does what?"

Tucker shrugged. "Chlorine's super toxic. It's supposed to kill anything that's living in the pool water. Why do you think they tell you not to swallow it?"

"Hello? Guy who never learned to swim. Why would I know this?" snapped Danny. "And you didn't think to mention this _before_ we decided to come here?"

"I thought you knew!" protested Tucker. "No need to take my head off."

Danny sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Sorry. I'm not mad at you. I'm just… stressed out." He frowned at the water, and he was about to suggest that they give up and leave when something occurred to him. "But I don't have to use my gills. I figured out how to switch back and forth. Do you think that would be safe?"

"I don't see why not. So… great! I still get to see you turn into a fish!" Danny glared at Tucker, but the techno-geek ignored him and went on: "What made you change your mind, anyway?"

Danny was down to his boxers now. He wrapped a towel around his waist and slipped out of those, too. "Change my mind? About what?"

"Earlier this week, you were all, 'All human, all the time', and now you're about to go full-on merman. You don't have to change to do aquapathy, right? So, what changed your mind?"

Danny flinched. What was he supposed to say? Morbid curiosity? That after three nights of merperson swimming dreams, and then not being able to use his tail when he had the chance yesterday, he couldn't stop thinking about it? That there was some terrible itch deep inside of him, and every time he got near water, all he could think about was jumping into it?

"… I figured that it'd be easier to practice if I was in merfolk mode. You know, stronger connection to the water or something?"

Tucker nodded easily. "Okay, that makes sense. I'm not complaining, of course," he added quickly.

Danny rolled his eyes, and with a wry smile he shook his head. When Tucker got excited about something, anything, he couldn't be more obvious.

With nothing else to do, Danny grabbed a second towel, placed it at the side of the pool, and stood with his toes curled around the edges of the concrete wall. The water stretched out before him, surface shifting with gentle currents as though it were alive, breathing, beckoning to him. Danny's heart rate climbed steadily; his knees felt weak. "Do you remember our contingency plan?"

"The one where I muster superhuman strength and drag you behind the bleachers?"

It wasn't much of a plan, to be fair, but it made Danny feel marginally better to have one than not.

"That's the one." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. This was it.

Danny did his best to clear his head of all thoughts. He didn't want to psyche himself out, or in the opposite extreme, become overly eager, drop straight in, and reflexively inhale toxic water through his gills. Mind as blank as it was going to get, he sat down at the edge of the pool and lowered one foot and the other into the water.

They were gripped by that familiar dull ache, flattening, elongating, preparing to turn into a single fin. Taking another deep breath, Danny turned around backwards and lowered himself slowly by his arms. As soon as he was in to his waist, his legs began to merge. His bones grinded; muscles shifted; new muscles grew. He was suddenly aware of the fins at his hips, which he had forgotten existed, and then conscious of the flow of water again his tailfin.

Up to his shoulders now, Danny was gripping the side of the pool with his fingers and hovering in an awkward, half-formed body. He tossed his modesty towel, now soaked, onto the floor. Then, eyes still closed, he took two more deep breaths and let go.

The rest happened in mere seconds – the ache in his jaws as his canines turned to fangs, the strange sensation of his ears lengthening, the pressure in his neck as his gills formed, and then his throat closed –

Danny thrust his tail once and grabbed the side of the pool, back above the water. He stared at the concrete, at his webbed, white, glowing fingers with their black claws, as his abdominal muscles fought to work his lungs, and his chest grew tight; he began to panic, to think – _I was wrong, I can't switch at will, what am I going to do? –_ when at last, his airways opened up and he could breathe.

Meanwhile Tucker was staring. His eyes were wide and his mouth opened in a small 'o'.

Still panting, feeling a little self-conscious, Danny said, "You okay, Tuck?"

Tucker shook himself out of his stupor. He said, "Dude, that's messed up," and laughed incredulously.

"Gee, thanks," said Danny, glowering.

"I don't know what I was expecting," the technophile continued. "Maybe a little more 'Disney's the Little Mermaid' and a little less 'Hogwarts Black Lake'. Do all the merpeople look this… scary?"

Danny was about to snap, 'No!', but besides sounding argumentative, that wouldn't actually be in his favor. So he just huffed and said, "They're definitely not Disney."

They weren't what he would call 'scary', either. Intimidating, yes, and exotic, and unbelievable. But not inherently frightening.

Of course, he might have been biased.

"Are you rethinking what you said about wanting a 'hot mermaid' girlfriend?" he teased, trying to lighten the mood again. Because Danny couldn't stand his best friend thinking that he looked scary. He was still 'just Danny'. Tucker had to understand that.

"I think mermaids have gone down on the list…" Tucker frowned thoughtfully. "But they're not off the list."

Danny chuckled. It was a little forced, but then Tucker started laughing, too, and then they were both laughing genuinely.

"So," said Tucker when they had quieted down. Any of the trepidation that had been in his voice before was gone. "Do you think you can use your water powers now?"

"Let me, uh, warm up," said Danny. It had been almost a week since he'd last been in the water; he wanted to get used to it again.

He took a deep breath into his lungs and held it there, and he pushed himself back into the water. Danny hadn't been expecting for the water to burn his eyes, and he immediately resurfaced and grabbed the ledge of the pool.

"Ow," he breathed, exhaling all of the air. He rubbed his hands into his eyes, but it didn't help much.

"Oh yeah," said Tucker. "Chlorine does that, too. You'll get used to it."

"Great..." He liked this pool less and less. Maybe next time it would be better to risk the ocean. The extra possibility of imprisonment and/or death in exchange for more comfort didn't seem so bad right now.

Taking another deep breath, Danny submerged again. He opened his eyes and gritted his teeth against the initial discomfort. He did get used to it after a few seconds, but his vision was blurry. Shortly thereafter, he had to breathe again. This time, he stuck his head out of the water only long enough to suck in air, and he dropped under again. He used his hands to shove off backwards from the wall, twisted around, and thrust his tail as he dived down.

A second later, he was at the bottom of the ten-foot-deep pool. It was dim, the pool's night lights several feet overhead, and his skin glowed brightly. In the soft white light he produced, he saw about fifteen cents worth of loose change and a forgotten diving stick lying on the rough concrete.

The scenery wasn't exactly stimulating.

Even so, Danny was happy they had come here. The cool water, that liberating feeling of weightlessness, the peaceful silence and gentle darkness, light sparkling overhead. It wasn't the Atlantic, but it wasn't bad.

This was what Danny had been dreaming about the past few nights. This feeling, he had missed it. He'd even go as far as to say he had _craved_ it.

… and it was time to breathe again.

Growling, and letting loose a few bubbles in the process, Danny shot back to the surface, took another deep breath, and dove back down. As his momentum slowed, he stretched his tail out behind him as far as it would go, feeling the muscles tighten, and decided to swim a few laps.

He moved through the water with no resistance, his arms tight against his body, his pelvic fins working to help guide his course, and after each lap around the pool gradually increased his speed. He ignored the lanes and ropes above his head, except to dodge them as he came up for air, and instead swam in circular laps, practicing his turns, testing how fast he could go without coming in danger of crashing into the walls.

After about ten such laps, Danny swam back to the wall where he'd last seen Tucker and grabbed onto it again. Panting, he couldn't help but grin.

"Enjoying yourself?" asked Tucker. He had gone to sit on the bleachers next to their stuff and, unless Danny was mistaken, had his PDA pointed at him.

"Are you filming this?"

"Wouldn't you?" said Tucker. "What you're doing is impossible! Video evidence proves it really happened, in case I start to doubt my sanity."

Danny looked warily at the camera. "Just be careful. If someone finds that video-"

"Danny, relax, it's fine! Now, show me some powers!"

Right. Powers. That was why he was here, not to swim around like he didn't have a care in the world.

_Okay, Fenton. Moving water with your mind. Easiest thing in the world._

Even his inner monologue didn't sound convinced.

Danny turned his back to Tuck and, using his tail and one arm to stay afloat, raised a hand toward the middle of the pool. He imagined the spear of water he had conjured to kill that octopus, and imagined it happening again.

And, no big surprise, it didn't.

He hadn't been totally lying to Tucker earlier. He really had thought being in his mer-form would make this easier. So far, it didn't seem to be.

_What was I doing differently then?_ he wondered. Both times he had used this power, he had felt threatened, sure. Danny couldn't believe that he needed to be in danger for this to work, though. The merfolk didn't. Why should he?

He had nearly moved the water in Mr. Masters's cup. He'd failed, and so he had nearly forgotten all about it, but he had really been close. It had taken all of his focus; he had totally zoned out, until he hadn't been aware of anyone around him. So, maybe he needed to do that again, now. Just… focus…

Danny ignored whatever Tucker was trying to ask him. He simply looked hard at the surface of the water. He let himself sink deeper, until his nose was just an inch above it. Danny stared at the semi-dark liquid, and he didn't think about anything else. Not about Tucker. Not about getting caught. Not about swimming, or breathing, or anything. He let those other thoughts trickle out of his head one by one until the only thing that was left was the water.

He closed his eyes.

The water stretched to his front, sides, and beneath him. It lazily drifted into skimmers built into the walls, and flowed through pipes several feet below the concrete bottom of the pool, through a filtration unit, and burst back into the pool through the inlets in the walls. The majority of the water wasn't that clean, despite being full of chlorine. It was a stagnant, manufactured, and polluted kind of water.

There wasn't water only in the pool and its pipes. Danny had splashed some on the floor at the edge earlier, and it now sat there in a puddle. Tucker was sweating, under his arms and under his beret especially. There was also water in the humid air… it condensed on the upper windows, which were cool with the September night air, and ran down in little rivulets.

The water in the pool lapped loudly at his ears. At the same time, Danny's heart pounded loudly in his chest, intense 'thud-thud-thud's, and Danny realized he was full of water, too, especially his blood.

Listening so intensely to his pulse, Danny suddenly remembered the feeling of the waves syncing up with his heartbeat right before he had killed the octopus. Understanding welled up in his mind, slowly flooding through it. It hadn't just felt like he was being pulled toward water all week; the water had actually been pulling at him, with the same kind of gravity the moon exerted on the ocean tides. It wasn't alive, but it called to him, and his body called back, only… only Danny hadn't been listening.

He was listening now. Doing so, he knew exactly where all the water in this room was, the different temperatures it took, and the composition of chemicals and minerals in each droplet. When he opened his eyes again, the surface of the pool was in hyper focus. Danny could see each miniscule ridge and valley of its waves. He could feel how the water wrapped around his body, how it slid against the rough cement walls and floor.

Danny raised one cupped palm out of the water. He looked at the water he held, and he thought about it being in the air instead.

So, it was.

The water quivered and trickled into the air, where it collected in a little sphere, like a small glass marble.

Danny blinked at it, and then he looked down at the hand it had come from. The hand was covered in a thin sheet of moisture, some which had beaded into droplets that clung to his fingers. He thought about all of that water joining the marble… and so it did. Across his hand, the water condensed into rivulets that flowed upward, like raindrops in reverse, causing the little water orb to swell. As the water left his hand, the skin began to tingle and shift back to its human form.

A few seconds later, it was totally dry.

Danny gaped, stunned. He might have been a little too impressed, because suddenly the sharp focus vanished, and the pool was just a pool again, and the marble of water fell back into it with a soft 'plup'.

"I did it," Danny whispered, raising his head back out of the water. Then he laughed. "I did it!"

"Care to do it again, at a better angle this time?" asked Tucker, gesturing with his PDA. "'Cause I didn't get a thing, except you going into a Jedi trance."

"Yeah," Danny nodded, beaming. "I think I finally know how it works."

Tucker had just raised his camera, and Danny was preparing to concentrate on the water again, when the techno-geek's PDA buzzed, and kept buzzing – a phone call.

"Hang on," said Tucker. He pressed a button and put the device to his ear. Danny swam in lazy circles while he waited, listening to one half of the conversation.

"Hello? ...Yeah, I'm hanging out with Danny. We're at school… uh, football game… Wait, she did what? …She is? …Yeah. Yeah, no, that's fine. I'll go wait out front."

Tucker hung up the call and turned to Danny, frowning. "So, that was my mom," he said. "She says Grandma Foley was trying to break her bowling record and broke her hip instead… Anyway, she's in the hospital. My mom's gonna pick me up on her way there." He looked at Danny, the glow-in-the-dark merman swimming in a high school pool, and winced. "Are you going to be okay by yourself?"

"Yeah, totally, no problem," said Danny, offering his friend a thumbs-up. "I'll wrap up in a few minutes and go home."

"Sorry, Danny... Well, good luck. Let me know when you get out of here and that you're okay, and not, you know, being carted off for lab experiments."

Danny snorted. "Sure. And you tell Granny F I say 'hi' and I hope she's okay."

Still looking a little guilty and throwing glances over his shoulder at Danny, Tucker grabbed his stuff and left. The door to the pool swung behind him and clicked shut.

Danny looked at the door and chewed the inside of his lip. He knew he should climb out and start drying off; without Tucker to distract any would-be intruders, he was completely vulnerable. But, it was late at night, and the school building was deserted, students, teachers, and staff all too busy with the football game. Chances were that no one would even walk past this hallway, let alone come in here.

Plus, Danny really wasn't ready to leave the water yet. Just thinking about it caused a little ball of regret and anxiety to start gnawing at him.

He decided he should practice 'listening' to the water a little more before he left. If he was finely attuned to it, then he could probably use his powers to dry off in an instant. That in mind, Danny swam out to one of the middle lanes, stretched out on his back, and lay down on the surface of the water. His face was exposed to the air, but his ears were totally submerged, which seemed oddly appropriate.

As Danny floated there, it was very easy to relax. The anxiety he had felt about leaving was washed away. All of the problems he had faced and/or accumulated in the past few weeks became unimportant, so easy to ignore. He simply focused on breathing, and then not even that, as he let his awareness spill out to the water around him.

Soon, he could feel the water in the room again, all of it and all of its motions – pool, pipes, condensation, humidity, _him_. So, he stretched further. Outside, the grass was damp with dew, and the dirt below it was cool and semi-damp. At the football field, sweaty players crashed into each other and their sweat splattered onto the turf. Dozens and dozens of people held bottles and disposable paper cups full of water and soda, which they took swallows of between cheering and talking to friends. Slish, slosh, gulp.

What else could he feel? Past Neptune High, Amity Beach sat atop a network of water and sewage pipes, crisscrossing beneath every home and building. People soaked in baths, washed their dogs in metal tubs, laundered their clothes, boiled pasta on their stoves, flushed toilets, had flower vases on countertops, used lawn sprinklers to spray a fine mist onto their grass. Some cried salty tears.

Danny stretched further, past the houses and stores – out to _there_ , the ocean, that mammoth and incomprehensible being pulling and pushing at the beach, deep and heavy and black.

He began to feel light-headed, but still his awareness pushed further, faster and faster. It pushed past the beach, to the sandy and rocky floors, to the ridges, to the corals, to the mountains, to the volcanoes, to the canyons, and deeper still. His heart fluttered in its cage.

Water pressed heavy overhead. The pressure was nearly unbearable, but still emptiness stretched away beneath, black and thick, speaking of unattainable depths. Nothing could live down there.

… but something did.

Something moved.

Something was looking back at him.

Danny recoiled, sucking in air and flailing his arms, dunking himself in the pool water, because that's where he was – the Neptune High pool. He heaved breaths, trying to get his runaway heart under control. His world had snapped back to this room, but it felt like hours had passed, and Danny felt cold. He trembled, and he barely had enough control over his arms and fins to stay above the water.

The water in the room was still sharp to his senses. He immediately sensed something out of place.

There was another heartbeat, and it was close. Way too close.

Dread filled him, heavy like a lead weight had been tied to his tail. Danny turned to look, and immediately wished he hadn't.

Standing at the edge of the pool, sports bag clutched in one hand, expression frozen somewhere between awe and confusion, was Samantha Manson.


	13. Chapter 13

"… _sometimes one feels freer speaking to a stranger than to people one knows. Why is that?"_

" _Probably because a stranger sees us the way we are, not as he wishes to think we are."_

 _-_ Carlos Ruiz Zafón

* * *

Danny did the first thing he could think of – he dived to the bottom of the pool. There amongst the loose change and forgotten diving stick (and was that Mikey's missing calculator?) he pressed himself to the floor and squinted at the surface, where he could just make out Samantha's dark silhouette. If he could see her, of course she could see him even better.

His brain had skipped past panic and gone straight into numb horror. There were no helpful thoughts or bright ideas popping into his head, no matter how long he stared. He was trapped. His secret, maybe even his life, was now at the mercy of a girl who hated him.

He couldn't breathe. Of course, that was probably because he was ten feet underwater. Danny held out until that familiar feeling of suffocation, the forerunner of drowning, began to creep up on him and finally swam back to the surface. He reemerged at the wall opposite from Samantha, hid ineffectually behind the metal ladder there, gasped a few desperate breaths and prepared to dive again.

"Wait!" said the girl, and Danny was so shocked that he did.

Samantha dropped her bag and held up two placating hands. "It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you."

Yeah, that really wasn't what Danny was worried about. But he wasn't about to provoke her into the thing he _was_ worried about – i.e. her calling Amity Beach's resident merhunters and snapping a picture of him for the Internet – by saying he didn't view her as a physical threat. Suspicious, he sank back into the water until only the top half of his head, from nostrils up, was above the surface and gripped the ladder like a lifeline.

Samantha must have taken this as a sign of trust, because she started walking around the edge of the pool towards him. Danny didn't move, but when she got within about five feet, he glared and slipped to the other side of the ladder.

So instead of coming any closer, Samantha crouched down and did the last thing Danny could have imagined. With a bright smile, she stretched out her right hand and said, "Hi, I'm Sam. What's your name?"

Danny blinked dumbly. _What?_ Was he supposed to shake her hand and introduce himself? No, what was _she_ doing? Didn't she know that merpeople were people-eaters who could move water with their minds and capsize boats? His parents' Merfolk Awareness Program was persistent enough that everyone in Amity Beach would know those facts, whether they wanted to or not. So, did this girl have a death wish or something? She should have screamed and run away at the sight of him.

Some stupid part of him considered accepting the handshake, but then he realized that his wet hand with its webbed fingers and sharp black claws would not be very appealing to a girl.

In the end, he did nothing but continue to stare.

Samantha retracted her hand but was not fazed. "How did you get in here? Are you okay?"

 _Am I okay?_ This was weird. This was too weird. Danny figured he had to tell her something though. Afraid she'd recognize his voice, he mind-spoke and said:

**Why aren't you scared of me?**

The girl looked surprised at having a disembodied voice invade her head, but not in a bad way; her smile broadened. "Should I be scared of you?"

And Danny would have been justified in telling her 'yes'. He'd killed a giant octopus with the power of his mind only yesterday. But he wouldn't do that to a _person_ , and definitely not to the girl who sat next to him in English class. **Well,** _ **no**_ **, but most people would be.**

"Lucky for you, then, I'm not most people."

 _I'll say_. Danny narrowed his eyes doubtfully at her. In his ears, her heartbeat was calm – maybe a little fast, but he suspected that was out of excitement rather than fear. **You're not going to tell anyone about me… are you?**

"What? And have the Fentons come to dissect you?" Samantha looked genuinely disgusted at the thought. "Of course I won't tell anyone."

She seemed to understand the situation, if she was mentioning Danny's parents, but her responses were continuing to be inappropriate to the circumstances. Danny wondered if she was aware of this and decided to nudge her in the right direction.

**You do realize I'm a merperson… right?**

The girl rolled her eyes. "No, I thought you were a unicorn."

Danny took stock of himself. Had he been a unicorn – sparkling, fluffy, covered in flowers or rainbows or something – he could have condoned approaching him and trying to be friends. Instead, he was a merperson, with fangs, claws, glowing eyes, and skin the same white pallor of a fish's belly. Not exactly kid-friendly.

 **Merpeople are dangerous,** he said slowly.

Totally at ease, Samantha Manson sat down cross-legged at the edge of the pool, propped her elbows against her knees, and rested her head on two fists. "You just said I shouldn't be scared of you."

 **I could have been lying.** Danny nearly slammed his head against the ladder. What was he doing – did he _want_ her to scream and run away? Then again, if she ran away he might have some shot at escaping.

"Somehow I get the feeling you're more afraid of me than I am of you."

Danny didn't have a response to that. She was right. He sighed. **Okay, but you should be more careful anyway.** Remembering his less-than-pleasant encounter with Skulker, Reever, and Kaima's mother, he said, **Merpeople** _ **are**_ **dangerous, and next time you startle one, they could kill you without even touching you.**

"So why didn't you?"

Danny stared at Samantha, looking for some sign that she knew she was poking a sleeping lion, as it were. But her eyes were clear and confident. She was entirely unafraid of him.

Frowning self-consciously, Danny said, **I wouldn't kill anyone…**

"Okay then. That's settled."

Maybe Samantha was satisfied, but Danny certainly wasn't. He was still cornered in the school pool at the mercy of his classmate. **You wouldn't be opposed to letting me go, would you?** It didn't hurt to ask.

"What do you mean?" asked Samantha, looking bewildered. "Actually, why is there a merperson in the pool in the first place? How did you get in here?"

Danny raised his head out of the water and sighed. Rubbing the back of his neck, he said, **Would you believe me if I said I could grow legs and walk around?**

"Considering the circumstances, I wouldn't say that's unbelievable. But why the pool? Isn't the chlorine poisonous to you? And there are so many people around…"

Danny laughed out loud, weakly. **I wanted to swim, but the ocean is too dangerous right now.**

"Because of the Fentons," concluded Samantha, her face hardening. "So you've been hiding on land the rest of the time? That's so sad."

 **Eh.** He shrugged. **It's better than being dead.**

"No," said the girl angrily. "You're a majestic creature being kept from its home by hunters! This isn't right."

Despite everything, Danny snorted.

"What?" snapped Samantha.

He glanced down at himself and grinned wryly. **Sorry. It's my first time to be called 'majestic'.**

"But you are!" Samantha protested fervently. "You're a merperson! To us, your kind only exists in myth. You have powers beyond our comprehension. You're amazing."

 **Haha… Thanks…** Danny rubbed the back of his neck again, and he could see his skin glowing more brightly – the merperson equivalent of blushing, probably. **Honestly, though, I'm just me. I'm really nothing special.**

"What's your name?" asked Samantha.

 **Err.** He couldn't say he was 'Danny'. What kind of merperson was named 'Danny'? Merpeople had names like Kaima, Daru, Skulker, Reever, not real-world names. Besides, Danny _Fenton_ was already too closely related to merpeople; it would be a dead giveaway. His eyes flitted about the room, landing on the school banner for the Neptune Narwhals, and he said the first thing that popped into his head – **Triton. It's Triton**.

"Really?" said Samantha, blinking in astonishment. "Like the son of Poseidon?"

Danny had been thinking about the planet Neptune's moon, Triton, but son of Poseidon worked, too. **It's a pretty common merperson name,** he lied.

"Did he really exist?" asked Samantha with increasing enthusiasm. "In Greek mythology, he was practically the father of all merfolk. But I'm sure you knew that already..."

 **Uh, no idea, he's just a myth for us, too,** said Danny quickly. He was ready to move on from this subject before he dug himself into an even deeper hole. Actually, he was flat-out ready to escape from this whole scenario. **Um, Samantha?**

"Sam," she said. "Please just call me Sam."

 **Okay. Sam.** He frowned at a point somewhere to the left. **Returning to the issue of letting me go… I need to change into a human, but to do it, you have to leave.**

Sam was quiet, and when Danny looked back at her, he was not prepared for how disappointed she looked.

 **Not because I don't trust you!** he added quickly. **I trust you. You seem really trustworthy. But, um…** He scrambled. **When I change I will be entirely naked and you shouldn't have to see that.**

Sam's eyes widened and color flooded her cheeks. When Danny realized what she must have been imagining, his light burned brighter than ever. He sank back into the water and wished he could dissolve into bubbles and disappear.

"Is that your bag over there?" asked Sam, not meeting his eyes and instead looking across the room to the bleachers.

 **Oh. Right. Yes, I have clothes. In there.** This was getting out of hand. **You know what, could you just wait in the locker room until I get dressed? Then you can use the pool. Uh, please.**

"Yeah, I can do that…" Why did she have to look so put out? It was his fault, too. No, wait a second, why did he even care? "Will you tell me before you leave?"

 **Sure, but do you promise not to… look…?** They both blushed harder at the question, and Danny immediately regretted asking it. **You know what I mean**.

"I promise."

Sighing, Sam stood and took her bag to the locker rooms. Danny stared at the door for a few seconds, trying to decide if he truly trusted her, but then he realized he had no choice. He was still at her mercy, and there was no changing that.

So, Danny pulled himself up the ladder and awkwardly rolled onto the floor at the side of the pool. The air felt uncomfortable and cold on his skin and scales after having been in the water for so long. Even considering the terrible situation he had found himself in and everything that had gone wrong tonight, for some reason he still regretted having to leave the pool. He shook off that disappointment the best that he could.

He sighed and focused on clearing his head so that he could get this aquapathy power to work again. Danny closed his eyes, listened to the water, and found it even easier to connect to it. He then realized he hadn't fully detached himself from the water in the first place; his senses had continued to be hyper-aware of it since the moment he'd fallen out of that strange trance.

Therefore, it was easy to feel all of the liquid clinging to his body and tell it to go back to the pool where it belonged. It didn't even take a minute to dry off and change back, except for his hair, which had proved a little trickier to maneuver the water out of and stayed damp no matter how hard he thought at it. But good enough. Stretching his legs out in front of him, Danny smiled, pleased with his new ability. At least something good had come out of tonight.

Self-conscious, vulnerable, exposed in more ways than one, Danny went and grabbed his towels from the other side of the pool, scrambled to get dressed again, draped his dry towel over his head, and then put on his jacket, pulling the hood up to obscure his face even further.

He considered just leaving now, without telling Sam, but he realized that would make him a Jerk. So, he went to the hallway that led to the locker rooms and swim coach's office, found the door to the girls' locker room, and knocked. Danny immediately turned his back to it, and when Sam came out a few seconds later, she was met with the back of a - hopefully - anonymous hooded figure.

Sam gasped. "You really can turn into a human. That's amazing!"

Danny shoved his hands into his pockets. **I'm going to go now, so you can swim or do whatever you came here for…**

"Will you come back?"

The question caught him off guard and he nearly turned to look, to see if she was serious. **Maybe? Probably…?**

"Tomorrow night?"

It dawned on him – she wanted to meet him again. Really? _Fenton, a girl is asking to hang out with you. What are you going to say? You'd have to be some kind of idiot to say 'no', you realize that, right?_

It would put his secret at an even greater risk than it was already. Regardless, he found himself asking, **Will** _ **you**_ **be here tomorrow night?** Then he realized the question could be taken a different way – that if Sam was here, he wouldn't be – and winced. Even as 'Triton', he was a complete idiot around girls.

"Only if it's okay. Is it okay? I mean, if you don't want me to come-"

 **No! I mean, it's fine. You, being here. You just caught me off guard tonight, what with the clothes, and the... and… I'm going to shut up now.** He was glad he had stopped glowing so she couldn't tell how badly he was blushing. He must have been red to the tips of his ears.

"Probably for the best."

 **I should arrive first, though. I'll come at eight, and you should come at eight-thirty. That way** -

"You can preserve your secret human identity. I get it. So," said Sam, voice hopeful, "I'll see you tomorrow?"

Danny nodded, said, **Yeah. See you,** and fled.

* * *

He couldn't sleep that night. For one, his brain was stuck on 'water mode', and since his bedroom overlooked the ocean, it was difficult to tune that behemoth out.

More importantly, he wasn't able to stop thinking about Samantha Manson… Sam. Now that he was far away from her and the Neptune Pool, he realized he was terrified to go back the next evening. What had he been thinking, agreeing to that? Was this what his mother had been talking about when she said teenage boys were governed by their hormones? Had he said 'yes' just because Sam was a girl? Was he turning into Tucker?

He didn't even _like_ Sam – not like _that_. Not even as a friend. So why had he agreed to risk his life and meet her again? Everything had happened so fast. He hadn't been thinking.

_Idiot!_

The next morning, Danny dragged himself down the stairs for breakfast. He knew he had closed his eyes a few times during the night, but he wasn't entirely sure if he had slept or not. If nothing else, he had been able to turn off his radio reception of the ocean, finally, sometime around dawn.

Unsurprisingly, his parents were already out of the house; ever since Vlad Masters had shown up, they'd been spending more and more time working, and except for those obligatory family-plus-one dinners, had been making even less of an effort to see their children than normal. Danny wasn't sure if this was because of the breach in security, the pictures of Kaima and him that were concrete evidence of merpeople in Amity Beach, Mr. Masters's presence, or some combination of the three.

Anyway, it didn't have anything to do with him.

There was Jazz, though. When he reached the kitchen he found his older sister eating a bagel, drinking coffee, and reading the newspaper – in other words, pretending to be several years older than she actually was.

He poured himself a bowl of cereal and sat across from her. Their eyes met and they made some sounds that weren't quite the words 'Good morning' before going back to their own business. Danny texted Tucker as he ate, making plans to play Doomed as soon as Danny was done with his homework, which he was most _definitely_ not going to forget about this weekend.

He'd messaged Tucker the night before, too, after getting home. Then Danny had merely said he'd been able to dry off and leave school without any problems. He made no mention of the strange vision he'd had (which Danny had filed away in a folder next to the giant octopus attack and Vlad Masters's disappearance into the fog – in other words, things that his brain was just not ready to deal with or accept as reality). He didn't say anything about Sam, either. He wasn't sure if it was because he was embarrassed, or because Tucker would make a big deal out of it, or what.

And about his plans for Saturday night, Danny vaguely mentioned he would be busy and left it at that.

His stomach was churning with nerves.

"Have you seen Mom and Dad today?" Danny asked Jazz half-way through his breakfast, when he realized he didn't have much of an appetite.

She looked up at him, unimpressed by him initiating a conversation. "Not since last night. They're already out in the Boat."

"You think they'll catch a merperson?"

Jazz rolled her eyes and went back to the newspaper. "Don't know, don't care."

"I mean, they have _pictures-_ "

His sister scoffed. "I don't know what they have pictures of, but I'm sure it's not merpeople."

Danny nodded, pretending to agree with her. "You still don't think they exist."

"Because they don't."

Danny hesitated with his next question. He wanted to ask, but he needed to be careful. Jazz was studying psychology, so she was probably the best person to ask.

"Say they _did_ exist – I mean, hypothetically," he added quickly. His sister did not look amused, but her raised eyebrow meant she was going to let him finish the thought. "Or any mythical creature. And someone met one… what would be the normal, human response to that?"

Jazz rolled her eyes again, but she had adopted a thoughtful expression and seemed to consider his question. After a few seconds, she said, almost to herself, "They'd try to rationalize it, wouldn't they? A man sees Bigfoot in the woods, but when he thinks back to the experience, he realizes it was probably a bear instead. People don't want to be labeled as crazy by the people around them, so I think most would pretend the creature was something other than it was until they finally believed it themselves. I wish the same rule applied to our parents," she added, grumbling.

"And probably they'd be afraid, right?"

"Afraid, disoriented, questioning their sanity. People understand the world to be a certain way, and when something doesn't fit into that worldview, I'm sure they would experience a feeling of cognitive dissonance."

"So, something like going and striking up a conversation with the creature…?"

Jazz blinked. "What?"

"Hypothetically," repeated Danny. "That would be weird, right?"

"If anything here is weird, little brother, it's _you_." Jazz shook her head and picked up the paper again, this time pointedly holding it up in front of her face as an ink-and-paper shield against annoying younger siblings.

Well, she had mostly answered his question. Sam was weird. Potentially insane.

And he had agreed to meet her, again. _Great, Fenton. Once again, you prove your inability to make good decisions. Just great._

Eleven more hours. It was going to be a long day.

* * *

Danny slunk into Neptune High School that night, and it felt even sketchier than it had the day before. At least Friday, there had been people around for the football game, and lights had been on throughout the building. Today, the place was dark except for a couple of rooms where teachers were doing late-night lesson-planning. Maybe the janitor was in there, somewhere. Maybe Lancer.

No, even Mr. Lancer went home sometimes, right?

The front door was open, anyway, probably for the sake of those hard-core teachers who were working on a Saturday night. Trying to be one with the shadows, Danny went as quickly and quietly as possible to the pool, which he strongly expected to be locked.

It wasn't.

Security was seriously lax in this school, he realized. Maybe there was nothing to worry about after all. It didn't mean he regretted his decision any less. Nope, this was still a really bad decision, but because he was an idiot, he was going through with it.

Danny scouted every inch of the pool and its connecting rooms to be sure they were empty before he felt safe to get into the water. Once he had, there was very little he could concentrate on doing in the twenty minutes before Sam arrived. He swam a few laps, dove to the bottom of the pool and retrieved everything he had seen there last night, and then practiced manipulating a ball of water to the point that he could play catch with it.

He was in the middle of this when the door opened. Stiffening, Danny spun around and in the process lost control of the water, which splashed against the top of his head.

Sam Manson looked really happy, almost relieved, to see him. "You're here!"

A girl smiling at him so genuinely was a novel feeling. Danny rubbed the back of his neck and looked off to the side. **I said I would be…**

Sam sat down at the side of the pool, took off her boots and socks, and let her feet dangle into the water. "What were you doing just now? What was that splash?"

So she _had_ seen that. Danny swam a little closer to her, but only a little. **I was practicing controlling water. See?** He held up his hands and quickly formed another ball of liquid that he passed from one hand to the other like he was juggling.

"Okay, that is _very_ cool," said Sam. "Power over water, telepathic communication, being able to change your form – is there anything else you can do?"

 **No, that's everything,** said Danny. And it was, as far as he knew. He frowned, narrowing his eyes, and decided to tackle the issue first-and-foremost on his mind. **You're taking all of this really well.** He remembered when he had first met Kaima; he had thought he was hallucinating, or dreaming, or both. Tucker, too, had been pretty unnerved by the whole deal, the transformation, the powers, especially the mind-speak. According to Jazz, these were the normal reactions to this situation. So why was Sam taking all of this in stride?

"Am I?" She laughed. "You wouldn't be saying that if you'd seen me last night. I didn't sleep at all."

**You too?**

"What, you didn't sleep?"

They blinked at each other, and both grinned. Danny chuckled out loud and in mind-speak said, **It's not every day you find a merperson in the high school swimming pool. I was kind of freaked out.**

"Says the merperson in the high school swimming pool," Sam drawled. "How do you think I felt?"

Danny shrugged. **Survey says 'overjoyed'?**

"Sure," said Sam, "but obviously after you left, I had to wonder if it had all really happened. I've just been waiting for such a long time…"

 **To meet a merperson?** he asked incredulously. Besides his parents and Mr. Masters (and crazy old fishermen with names like Peg-Leg McGee), he didn't know anyone who seriously believed that merpeople existed. He really hoped Sam wasn't that kind of person. It didn't matter that merpeople actually did exist, people just weren't supposed to believe in things like that, period. Because, _crazy_.

"Not necessarily a merperson, just… _something_." The dark-haired girl scowled into the water. She didn't seem keen on elaborating.

Danny didn't press, and then suddenly the conversation turned around and pointed its finger at him: "Last night you said the ocean is too dangerous right now. You didn't say why."

 **It's like you said…** Danny shrugged nonchalantly. **The Fentons have stepped up their security lately. That, and I've sort of got the Merfolk Empire after my head…** He scratched his ear, looking off into a corner of the pool, and was a few seconds late to notice Sam gaping at him. **What?**

Her jaw snapped shut. "Sorry, I just didn't realize I was talking to a wanted criminal."

Danny's light flared up again, and the fins at his hips fluttered. **I'm not… a** _ **criminal**_ **. I just… I mean… Just because I was in prison doesn't mean I'm guilty of anything.**

"Right," said Sam doubtfully.

This was quickly becoming awkward, even more than the previous night, which had been awkward enough. There was a serious problem with this conversation, being that one side thought the other was mentally unbalanced, and said mentally unbalanced side now thought the first was an evildoing vagabond.

Danny sunk into the water and blew bubbles across the surface. **Look, it's a long story. There was a misunderstanding, and now the Empress thinks I'm an enemy spy. But the princess helped me to escape from prison, even though by escaping we accidentally alerted the Fentons to our presence... In short, now I'm hiding from the both of them.**

Sam was quiet for a long time. Danny glanced up at her, wondering if the silence was because she didn't believe his story, which was, to be fair, pretty unbelievable. She was frowning thoughtfully at the water. When she caught him looking, she said, "It's hard to imagine there's this whole other world out there. A Merfolk Empire? Another civilization under the ocean?"

 _Believe me, I know how you feel,_ he thought. **Merpeople are just as surprised by humans as you are of them, you know.**

"Are they?"

 **The princess told me she thought humans eat merpeople.** Danny laughed out loud, grinning and showing his fangs. **Ironic, isn't it?**

"Because merpeople eat humans, right?" Ah, so Sam _had_ been reached by the Fenton Merfolk Awareness Program. She said it with a straight face, but something in the tightness of her eyes betrayed a portion of wariness. At least she wasn't stupid.

No, of course she wasn't stupid. Sam was one of the smartest kids in Danny's class. And finally, she was nervous of him, like a normal person should be. Strangely, it wasn't a much better feeling than her flippant gung-ho 'yay merpeople' attitude.

Danny laughed again – this time, forced. **Nah, that's a myth, too. We eat fish.**

"So, I've been wondering since last night, but can all merpeople come on land, like you?"

Danny's eyes widened. That wasn't a question he'd been expecting. Besides, he strongly suspected that the answer was 'no'.

He must have hesitated for too long, because Sam concluded, "They can't, can they?"

 **Err…** Danny tapped his forefingers together and avoided her lilac-colored, scrutinizing eyes. **No…?**

The girl smiled triumphantly. "I thought so. Otherwise, why wouldn't they have a better understanding of humans? And why wouldn't we have a better understanding of merpeople? If they could come on land, they could fight for their rights – we wouldn't be hunting them!"

 **To be fair, there's not a lot of merhunting going on…** **I don't think they have anything to worry about.** Danny said that, but then he remembered the Siren Speeder and its ultimatum for the merfolk, and cringed.

 _No, that's not my responsibility_ , he reminded himself.

Sam leaned in and peered into his face with such an intensity that he flinched and started to burn brightly again. **What?**

"Why are you special?"

Danny swallowed. To be honest, he also wanted to know that. He knew Kaima had done something to him, but in the chaos of their last meeting, he had forgotten to ask exactly what. **I honestly don't know. And you realize that you're asking a lot of personal questions, don't you?** His pelvic fins fluttered, and he wondered if that, like the annoyingly telling glow of his skin, was another side-effect of his emotions.

Sam laughed; it wasn't apologetic in the least. "Haha, right. I'm just really interested in you. I can't help it."

Danny's face was deadpan. **You can't help it. Then it's only fair if I get to interrogate you, too.**

"Interrogate?" Sam sputtered. "I'm not-!"

 **You are totally interrogating me** , retorted Danny smugly. **That's okay. I don't blame you for having questions. Actually, I'm glad you have questions. If you didn't have questions, that would be weirder.**

Sam crossed her arms. "What do you want to ask me?"

Danny was getting tired of treading water, so he swam to the edge of the pool a few feet from Sam, crossed his arms on top of the concrete, and laid his head on them. **What were you waiting for?**

It was Sam's turn to look uncomfortable, and Danny felt somehow proud to have successfully shifted the awkward spotlight off of himself. **C'mon** , he egged, grinning. **You said not merpeople. So what?**

Sam huffed and rolled her eyes. "Fine! I was waiting for something fantastic to happen."

Danny smirked. **I'm flattered.**

Glaring, Sam said, "Not that kind of fantastic. I meant fantastical. Something out of the ordinary." She sighed, and the prickliness faded. "I wanted some sign that the life I'm living is not the extent of the world. I was waiting every day for something to come and change it, to get me out… I thought it would be college, to be honest. Not a mythical creature."

Color flooded her cheeks again, and she stared into her lap. "I've never really told this to anyone before."

Danny turned away, looked at the bleachers. **We're strangers. It's easy to talk to people you don't know.**

It wasn't true. Danny knew Sam. He knew that she looked constantly lonely and did not get along with her friends. He knew that she always seemed bored in class. He knew she didn't trust people because she thought they would use her for her looks or her money or her connections, and that these things had probably happened before.

He felt guilty, like he was wrongfully invading her privacy. This wasn't a confession she would want Danny Fenton being privy to.

Danny pushed off from the wall and began floating on his back, arms crossed behind his head, tail working lazily. **I've never told anyone how great it feels being in the water. Not even my best friend.**

"What do you mean?"

**I mean, when I become a human and go on land, I feel like something inside of me is being severed. I couldn't understand it until recently, but now I think I do. There's this empty feeling in my chest, and it isn't until I'm swimming again that I feel normal.**

"Isn't that natural? I love to swim, but I'm sure I would feel homesick if I had to live on my parents' yacht and never got to come on land."

Danny closed his eyes. He 'listened' to the water surrounding him on all sides, filling the air, rushing through their veins and hearts. **I don't think it's natural at all. Actually, it kind of scares me.**

Opening his eyes again, he saw Sam's face, and it looked pensive. **All I mean to say is, I think it's okay for us to share this kind of stuff with each other. Don't you?**

She smiled a little. "Who would we tell?"

 **Exactly.** Danny's guilt at hearing Sam's private thoughts was assuaged, but only a little. **Sam?**

"Yes?"

Gazing up at the tall ceiling of the room, Danny said, **There are a lot of things in the world that I don't understand. Recently, something inexplicable has been happening to me almost every day. So, whatever life you're living here in Amity Beach, don't feel like you have to settle for it. The world is big, and I'm sure there are plenty of fantastic things in it.**

Sam was quiet for a while, so Danny kept floating and waited. He was starting to wonder if his unsolicited advice had been taken the wrong way when finally, Sam said, "Triton?"

**Yes?**

"This conversation has gotten really heavy."

He sighed. **Yeah, it has.**

"But, not in a bad way." Danny rolled over and looked at her, and saw that Sam was smiling. "I don't have anyone to talk to, not really. I don't know you, and we're not even the same species, but…"

**Yeah. Thank you, too.**

They spent the next hour chatting, and it rapidly grew easier to talk to each other. Trying to get out of the heavy zone, they told each other about their interests. Danny learned that Sam was a huge fan of Gothic literature like _Dracula_ and _Frankenstein_ , enjoyed writing poetry, but also rocked out to bands like Metal Betty and the Funkey Monkeys. Danny told Sam as much as he dared about his love of outer space, even his 'impossible' (for a merman) dream of going there someday.

They began to talk about their strange relationships they had with their families – in Danny's case, how they had very little in common but still cared about each other when it mattered; in Sam's, how her parents took very little interest in Sam personally, only concerning themselves with her behavior in public.

"You know my friends aren't even my friends by choice?"

**You're kidding.**

"They're the kids of my parents' friends. It's been that way ever since I was little."

**Haven't you tried hanging out with other people?**

"Sure. But people are shallow. They weren't interested in me for who I was. The worst part is I trusted these people, but they only wanted to hang out with me because of the money, or because I was 'popular'. You wouldn't believe the number of people who try to use me as a stepping stone to get closer to Paulina."

**Who's, uh, Paulina?**

A scowl.

**I get the picture.**

"At least these fake friends of mine are honest. They don't pretend to like me, and I don't have to pretend to like them."

**It's a relationship built on mutual hatred, huh.**

"It sounds bad when you say it like that, but it's easier than believing in someone and then finding out that everything you trusted about them was a lie. That… hurts more than anything."

**So you keep people at a distance.**

"It's safe."

**It must be lonely.**

Sam opened her mouth but stopped. Instead, she frowned, furrowing her brows. "Someone else told me that recently. That I look lonely."

Danny's eyes widened. He quickly occupied himself with an orb of water that he'd gotten to glide around his hand in a loop. **One of your so-called friends?**

"No," said Sam. "Just… some dorky boy in my class."

 _Dorky?_ Danny felt his fins itching to flutter and flap and sternly told them 'no'. **He had a good point. You don't think… he's one of those people who want to use you, do you?**

Another scowl. Sam was a very good scowler. "I don't know what his problem is. This kid…" She let out an exasperated sigh. "So, he's this scrawny guy who's been the target of the school bully for years. And maybe I felt sorry for him in the past, but after finally talking to him, I can almost see why Dash wants to beat him to a pulp. He's got this terrible, sullen attitude, and he's an awful student on top of all of that."

 **Sounds like a grade-A jerk,** said Danny petulantly. He let the orb of water float an inch or so above his palm; it started growing spines like a sea urchin. **Then again, maybe he just has a lot on his plate. You never know.**

"No, you're right," Sam relented. She frowned at the water and kicked her heels against the side of the pool. "Did you know, he's the only person who's ever criticized my behavior toward Paulina and Dash? Even though he has as much reason or more to dislike them, he basically told me I should treat my friends with more respect. Besides that, he's the only person who's ever realized that I'm, well, lonely. Other than you, that is."

 _No, still the only person, Sam,_ thought Danny. He flattened the spiny blob of water into a flat disc.

"I can't figure out if he's really perceptive of people or just riding some moral high horse."

The disc collapsed with a splash. He couldn't help it – his light flared and his pelvic fins flapped two violent flaps.

"Are you okay?" said Sam.

Danny ground his teeth. **Sure, fine. Tail cramp.**

"Ouch," said the girl, wincing sympathetically. "By the way, do you have somewhere to live?"

 **Of course,** said Danny absently, still fuming over the barrage of insults he'd just weathered.

"I don't mean in a cardboard box under the overpass."

 **Why would I…?** His mind backpedaled so fast that he had mental whiplash. His story was that he was a merperson fugitive on the lam. So his home proper was at the bottom of the ocean. **Oh.**

"Please tell me you're not…!"

**I'm not! I'm… I'm…**

"Oh my gosh. I didn't even realize." Sam's concern was almost palpable. "Okay. You can stay at my house until it's safe to return to the ocean. We have plenty of spare rooms; I'm sure my parents wouldn't even know that you were there."

Sam was asking him to live with her. No, Sam was trying to take him home like he was a stray puppy. Triton, the stray mermaid she'd found at the pool. This was beyond pathetic.

He wilted in the water. **I appreciate the offer, but I'm not homeless. Don't worry.**

"Where are you staying?"

He fabricated like he had never fabricated before. **A motel.** How could he afford a motel? **And I've got a part-time job? Yeah, a part-time job. For clothes and food and… other things you need to live.**

"I'm going to tell you that I don't entirely believe you."

 **It's fine even if you don't. I'm fine. Don't worry.** Speaking of going home… **What time is it, anyway?**

Sam pulled a smartphone from her pocket and checked it. "Just past 9:30. It's getting late."

**Yeah…**

Neither made a move to leave.

**Do you often come to the school pool after hours?**

Sam shrugged. "Pretty often. I broke the historical record for swimming times here, so Lancer and all the faculty let me come and go as I please. More practice equals more medals, after all. It's breaking a few safety protocols, sure, and it's proof that the administration is blatantly corrupt and slanted in favor of athletics, but… I'm not going to complain."

Danny nodded; he could easily believe the school making that call. **I wondered why the door was left unlocked. Doesn't your family have its own pool, though?**

She scoffed. "My parents monopolize it. They're constantly throwing these parties and luncheons that all seem to involve grilling meat, listening to bad music, and acting like a bunch of drunken teenagers. No thank you."

Danny chuckled. **You're actually pretty opinionated, aren't you?**

"Forgive me for having a brain and using it."

 **No,** he said quickly, **it's a good thing. I don't have any opinions, and so I never know what to do about anything. You, on the other hand, you find a mythical creature and the first thing you ask is if it's okay and if it has a place to live. That's really cool.**

"You're not that bad yourself," the girl teased.

 **Do you, uh… want to meet again tomorrow?** Danny rubbed the back of his neck; his heart beat heavily in his chest.

"I was wondering who was going to ask first. Same time?"

He nodded. **Same place.**

Sam grinned earnestly, and Danny felt it was really refreshing. "I'll leave first so you can have your privacy," said Sam, winking.

**I'm never going to live that down, am I?**

"Not in your life."

* * *

Danny felt light as a feather as he walked out of the pool. He nearly forgot to try to be stealthy. He didn't even feel so bad when turning back into a human.

He couldn't explain it. For some reason, talking to Sam was so comfortable, more so than even talking to Tucker. The things that were serious she took seriously, but she had nothing against making a joke at his expense. She was confident; she was smart; she was kind. She didn't care that he was a half-fish freak, she treated him like a person. It was the last thing he had ever expected should someone find out about him.

So what that she admitted to hating Danny Fenton? (Okay, that bothered him a lot. He wouldn't lie to himself about that.)

Even so… even so… Tonight had been nice.

Danny headed toward the front doors, absorbed in thinking about the next day and coming back for another swim, and had his mind not been lingering in 'water mode', he might have missed the long puddle of water stretching down the middle corridor. He could sense that it had originated in the boy's bathroom, in the vicinity of the toilets.

 _Eww. Did not need to know that._ Danny hoped the janitor would get the dirty toilet water mopped up by Monday; it ran right next to his locker.

He quickly forgot about the puddle and didn't think any more of it that weekend.

In retrospect, he would wish he had.


	14. Chapter 14

" _With a secret like that, at some point the secret itself becomes irrelevant. The fact that you kept it does not."_

\- Sara Gruen

* * *

_Weren't you supposed to be gone by now?_

Danny glowered at his dinner plate while he rechecked his math. Today was Sunday. He'd gotten here last Sunday. That was seven days, one whole week.

So why was Vlad Masters still here?

Danny's foot tapped an impatient rhythm under the table. It was already seven-twenty, and with the way things were going, Danny wasn't sure he was going to make his meeting with Sam. That, and he was really not in the mood for another 'jolly' dinner with this billionaire.

"What's wrong with you?" Jazz hissed at him.

He turned his glower on her and hissed back, "I had plans tonight."

"Am I keeping you from something, Daniel?" said Mr. Masters politely, and conversation at the table fell silent. Danny flinched and looked up; he hadn't meant for anyone else to hear that.

"Of course not," Danny's mom answered, speaking as much to her son as she was to the billionaire, and it became clear that not only Mr. Masters but in fact everyone at the table had heard him. "Danny knows that Sunday nights are for homework and chores. And I'm _sure_ he would have asked for permission first, if he had wanted to make plans."

"Busted," Jazz snickered.

"But Mom-"

"Danny, I know your father and I have been out of the house a lot recently, but that doesn't mean you can forget our rules in the meantime. Your curfew on school nights is nine o'clock; that means tonight, too. So you can just call Tucker and tell him that he'll have to wait."

Danny slumped in his chair and crossed his arms. "Fine."

"Ah, I remember when I was that age," chortled Mr. Masters nostalgically, like he was strolling in his memory through some 'good old days'. Danny tried to imagine the man as a 14-year-old, and took some satisfaction when his brain produced a scrawny, acne-ridden nerd in suspenders and taped-up glasses, hanging from the school flagpole by his underwear. "I had a rebellious streak, too. You mustn't blame him."

_I wasn't trying to be rebellious_ , Danny wanted to say, but clenched his teeth instead.

"Hahaha!" came Jack's booming laugh. He slapped Mr. Masters on the back with one massive hand and almost made the billionaire choke on his fork. "I didn't know you in high school, V-Man, but I sure remember you in our college days. Your pranks were legendary! Weren't you the guy who dressed up in a chicken suit, broke into the Agri building, and wrote 'Free the Chickens!' on all of the pull-down chalkboards?"

"I rather remember being coerced into-"

"Yeah, that was you!" Jack plowed ahead. "All those chicken feathers, phew… Good times! Do you ever have the urge to do that at DALV Corp? Just pull one over on all of your employees?"

"I run a business, Jack, not a daycare," the man replied coolly.

Jack guffawed again and jabbed a thumb towards Mr. Masters. "You wouldn't believe what this guy used to be like."

"Thank you, Jack," said Mr. Masters, obviously done with this thread of conversation. "Speaking of business, I think it's time I shared the news. I know that our search for this runaway merboy hasn't produced any results, but it doesn't change the fact that these creatures have breached your buoys at least three times in two weeks. We cannot know what they're planning, but we can know that they are growing more daring, and for the people who live along the coast, it cannot mean anything good.

"Furthermore, as of two days ago DALV Corp has acquired Amity Beach's own Axion Labs. Taking both of these developments into consideration, I felt it proper to, at least temporarily, transfer myself here from Baltimore."

Danny couldn't believe his ears. No way. He had to be kidding.

"Vladdy, that's great news!" beamed Danny's father. "Hear that, kids? Good ol' V-Man's gonna be sticking around for a long time!" Maddie looked similarly thrilled, and Jazz at least had the wherewithal to offer a polite smile. Danny could drudge up no such thing.

"I've already bought a house at the southern end of town. And I was hoping to throw a sort of 'welcome shindig' this coming weekend. Being that the Fentonworks Beach is in such an ideal location…"

Maddie took his blatant hint. "That's a wonderful idea, Vlad! Of course you can use our beach; you own it, after all."

Vlad Masters's eyes slid to Danny's; he smiled, and it reminded Danny of an eel. "What do you think, Daniel? Jasmine? Won't you join us in celebrating my stay here?"

Danny ground his teeth some more. Elbowing him in the ribs, Jazz quickly said, "We'd love to, Mr. Masters."

"Can I bring Tucker?" said Danny.

"Yes, yes," said Mr. Masters, waving a flippant hand. "Bring whoever you like. The more the merrier! I can promise you, it will be a night you won't soon forget."

* * *

Danny never made it to Neptune High that night. His mother practically hovered over his shoulder as he washed the dishes after dinner and then eyed him like a predatory bird as he trudged up the stairs to his room for 'homework'. By that point, it was already eight-thirty. Danny collapsed onto his bed and glared at the ceiling.

Sam would just be arriving at the pool, to find it empty. What would she be thinking? That he'd ditched her? That he'd been caught and filleted by the various parties who wanted him dead? Either way, it wasn't good.

Fuming, Danny grabbed his phone and hailed Tucker for a session of kicking butt in Doomed; Tucker was more than happy to oblige.

They worked their way through the Caverns of Cybernation, hacking and slashing the armies of 'Rejected Mini-Drones' and 'Cyberclone 3.0 Robots' that descended on them. It was their third try in this particular dungeon (which of course HPcthulhu13 had cleared solo in one go…), but Danny didn't mind the swarms of fast-rezzing robots. It gave him more to hit.

" _I'm invited to the party, right? Please tell me I'm invited to Vlad Masters's beach party."_

"Of everything I just told you, that's what you care about?"

" _C'mon, man. It's a beach party for Vlad Masters. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a guy like me!"_

"Don't worry, I invited you," Danny admitted. "But it was for my sake, not yours."

" _Either way, I'm in! Sweet! By the way, has there been anything new on the merperson front?"_

Danny's avatar used a combo move and took out three drones and two clones in one hit. "Yes! What? No, not really… I'm staying away from the ocean, and I can change forms at will." _And Sam Manson knows about my merperson half..._ "I think I've finally got a handle on things."

" _No more Creatures from the Black Lagoon?"_

"No more Creatures from the Black Lagoon. I told you, Tuck, it's not going to happen again."

" _Alright, alright."_ Tuck's avatar was impaled on the rusty arm of a Rejected Mini-Drone and suddenly died. _"No! Not a measly drone! Why?!"_

Danny laughed, even though seconds later his own avatar died and was rezzing at the graveyard. He was still bitter about the evening, but this sort of mindless endeavor made everything feel like normal.

* * *

Danny walked through the doors of Neptune High the next morning and froze. A couple of people behind him said some angry words and shouldered him out of the way, but he barely noticed them.

"Danny? Dude, what's up?" Tucker grabbed his arm, pulled him out of the flow of traffic, and studied his face.

Danny furrowed his brows, not really seeing Tucker or anything around him, for that matter. Stepping into the building, he had been struck by a peculiar feeling. It had started at the base of his spine and crawled up his back, and he felt as though all the hair on his body was standing straight up. Instinctively, Danny threw his mind into water mode, opening the doors wide, and he was hit by an incomprehensible wall of noise – the heartbeats of hundreds of students, toilets flushing, water fountains splashing, sweat rolling over foreheads, sodas sitting and chilling in vending machines, water sloshing in bottles in students' backpacks, the condensation on the classroom windows, and under it all, gallons of liquid rushing through pipes.

He staggered and held a hand to his head, grappling, feeling like he was trying to drag his brain back into his skull.

Somewhere far off, Tucker was shaking his shoulder and saying, "Danny!"

He managed to turn it off, mostly. He could still feel all of the liquid around him, like it was buzzing. The unnerving sense of 'wrongness' had dissolved into the chaos.

Danny shook his head, heaving a deep breath. "Sorry, Tuck. I felt light-headed for a second."

Tucker's eyes widened. He leaned in close. "Does it have anything to do with you-know-what?"

Aware of all of the people nearby, Danny just shook his head. "I'll tell you later. Let's head to class."

First period English with Mr. Lancer. Sam Manson was sitting in the same seat as always, head propped against one fist and staring out the window.

Danny gulped and almost blocked another doorway. His own heartbeat was deafening in his ears, blood roaring through his veins. He glanced down to make sure he had legs. Yes, he did, two of them. He was Danny Fenton, and Danny Fenton had about the same status to Sam as a smushed bug on the bottom of her shoe. There was no way she would know. She wouldn't even suspect.

Telling himself this over and over, Danny stiffly walked to his seat and sat down, purposefully not looking at her.

"Danny, you sure you're okay?" asked Tucker, sitting down on his other side. "You're acting weird."

"I'm fine," he grumbled, taking out Lancer's weekend assignment. "Like I said, I'll tell you later."

Class started, and Danny tried to concentrate on Lancer's droning voice as he continued lecturing them on _The Grapes of Wrath_. His pencil hung limp in his fingers, though, and more than his teacher's voice, all he could hear was the sound of Sam's heart beating a few feet away.

Through the corner of his eye, he glanced at her and tried to discern something, anything, from her expression. Was she upset that Triton had never shown up? Did she feel betrayed? But her face was a mask.

The bell couldn't have rung sooner. When it did, Danny practically leaped from his seat – in fact, he stood up so quickly that in the process he crashed into his desk and caused all of his books and supplies to spill into the floor. The students around him snickered and pointed; burning red, Danny bent to collect them.

After grabbing the last of them, Steinbeck's book itself, Danny straightened. At which point Sam said, "Danny?" and he nearly dropped everything again.

Shocked, Danny turned to Tucker to confirm that his friend was seeing the same thing, but the traitor just gave him a thumb's up, winked, and left. _Tucker, I'm going to kill you._

"S-Sam!" said Danny, turning back to the girl, trying to smile. "Hi…"

The girl's lilac eyes widened briefly, puzzled, and flicked across his face. Danny forgot to breathe. She was going to recognize him. Somehow, she was going to see that the shape of his face, the length of his hair, his stature, all lined up with the merboy's. This was it-

Sam sighed, shook her head a little and said, "I wanted to ask you - what do you know about merpeople?"

Danny blinked. "What?"

"Your parents are merfolk hunters, right? So you must know something about them."

Danny swallowed and looked away. He laughed, nervously. "Yeah. I know that they don't exist." He clutched his books tighter as he turned and started walking out of the room.

Sam wasn't going to be thrown off that easily. In seconds, she was at his elbow. "You don't seriously believe that, do you?"

"What do you want me to say?" he retorted. "My parents have been hunting merpeople for twenty years, and all they've got to show for it is an empty holding tank and some blurry pictures. Why would I think they exist?"

Sam pursed her lips, less than happy with his answer. "Look," continued Danny, "if you want to know more, I'm sure my parents would be more than happy to answer your questions."

"So they've never caught one?" said Sam.

Oh. Danny suddenly understood. She was trying to find out whether or not the Fentons had gone and captured Triton over the weekend. Danny smiled bitterly. "Nope. And believe me, I would be the first to know. So, anyway, I've got class, if you're done trying to jump aboard my parents' crazy train?"

Sam scowled at him and purposefully hit him as she walked past, muttering, "Jerk…"

Danny's shoulders drooped as he watched her stomp away. He felt like a little bit of his soul had just died, but his secret was safe, and whatever weird relationship he had with Sam had been preserved.

That was better, wasn't it? If 'Triton' was going to be friends with her, the less she saw of Danny Fenton, the less she thought of Danny Fenton, the more she hated Danny Fenton, the less chance there would be of Sam ever putting Triton and Danny Fenton together.

He knew, of course, that he could let Triton vanish into the wind. Now that he understood the aquapathy power, he didn't necessarily need to return to the pool and practice anymore. However, thinking about that, he felt a gnawing ache swell in his gut. It was as he'd told Sam on Saturday, when he'd finally given a name to it. It was a feeling of emptiness, gradually expanding inside of him, that could only be filled with one thing. And if he never got to be in the water again, he suspected he would be swallowed up by it. Maybe not any time soon, but he could imagine it eventually happening.

And now that Danny knew the Neptune Pool was left unlocked expressly for Sam's use, didn't using it come hand-in-hand with meeting her?

Even if it didn't, Danny just didn't want to give up the first friend he'd made since meeting Tucker back in elementary school. He felt childish to think about it like that, but he wanted to see Sam again so they could laugh together, and open their hearts up, and because Saturday night had just been a lot of fun. It was as simple as that. And if that was only possible as Triton, so be it.

That only left one problem – how was he supposed to arrange to meet her again?

The next few classes passed uneventfully, with a very distracted Danny turning the problem over and over in his head, until lunch finally arrived.

Immediately on sitting down at their table, Tucker confronted Danny about the events of that morning, starting with what Tucker clearly considered the most important – the popular Samantha Manson speaking to the incredibly unpopular (bordering on notorious) Danny Fenton.

"What was that about?" asked Tucker, waggling his eyebrows. "At the end of English class?"

"Do you mean me making a fool of myself, or the other thing?"

"That depends. Did you make a fool of yourself while talking to Samantha Manson, too, or was that only when you tried to kill your school supplies?" Laughing, Tucker went on: "C'mon, Danny, what happened? You two had a private conversation! What did you talk about?"

"She asked me about merpeople," admitted Danny reluctantly.

The smile dropped from his friend's face. "Fishman say what now?"

"She wanted to know what I know about merpeople," said Danny, looking anywhere and everywhere except at Tucker.

"Well, what did you tell her?"

"I didn't tell her anything!"

"You had to have told her _something_!"

Danny threw up his hands. "I told her they don't exist! Then I told her she was crazy, she called me a 'jerk', and that was the end of discussion. Happy? Crisis averted..."

Tucker looked troubled, which was a rare expression for him – so rare that Danny was prompted to ask, "What?"

"Aren't you worried? Danny, what reason would she have to be asking about merpeople?"

Danny worried his bottom lip and stared at the Monday meatloaf on his plate. He wondered how much he should tell Tucker, or if he should tell Tucker anything at all. He got the feeling Tucker would berate him and accuse him of being careless, or in the opposite extreme, feel guilty for having left Danny in that vulnerable position in the first place. At the very least, Danny could be sure that Tucker would not approve of what Danny had done that weekend, and approve of Danny's plans to repeat it even less.

He didn't like lying to Tucker, but he knew their standpoints on this issue would stand firmly against each other. He also didn't want to do a repeat of last week, of constantly lingering on the edge of fight with his best friend; he and Tuck fighting should never have to happen. Not if he could prevent it.

So, shrugging casually, Danny said, "Who knows? I think she's really into mythology, so maybe she just wanted to do some research."

"Mythology, huh?" Tucker grinned knowingly, but what it was Tucker knew, Danny had no idea.

"Tuck, I feel nervous when your face looks like that."

"You've really been watching her, haven't you?" said Tucker, smirking. "I thought so. You _like_ her."

"I don't like her!" Danny protested. "I just noticed she likes to read! What's the big deal?"

So much for 'serious Tucker'. And there was one more crisis averted.

"You're not off the hook for this morning, either," the technopath continued. "You had a mer-moment. Spill. What happened, and why did you look like you were about to pass out?"

Danny poked his mystery meatloaf with his fork, frowning as he spoke. "Okay... So, you know that feeling, like someone's watching you, and all the hairs on the back of your neck stand up?"

"I'm familiar with it."

"Well, imagine that, times ten." He sighed. "Also, I kinda have another power I never told you about…"

"What?" exclaimed Tucker. "You mean last night when I asked you if there was anything new with your merperson half and you said 'business as usual'… you were lying?"

And somehow Danny was still being berated by Tucker for keeping a secret. For an answer, he just shrugged uneasily while staring into the mysteries of the meatloaf.

"Danny! I'm your best friend! You're supposed to tell me these things."

"Look," said Danny, "it's not much of a power in the first place. It didn't seem like it was worth mentioning…" Tucker just stared at him, an eyebrow raised expectantly. Danny sighed and grumbled, "I can sense water. I've been calling it 'water mode' in my head. Seriously, though, it's just the first step in getting my other power to work. It's no big deal."

"When you say you can 'sense water'…?"

"For example, if I wanted to I could tell you exactly how much water is in the cafeteria, where it is, and what's in it. I told you, it's a lame power."

"What does it have to do with you wigging out this morning?"

Danny slumped and went back to prodding his mystery meatloaf. "When I felt that weird, dangerous… I don't know, _presence_ … I thought it might have something to do with my powers, so I thrust my brain full throttle into water mode. In short – too much info, too fast. And in the end, whatever gave me the heebie jeebies earlier, it's gone now."

"It's like the Spidey Sense, isn't it?" said Tucker, eyes gleaming.

"Huh?"

"No, listen," said Tuck, growing more excited. "So, Peter Parker has the ability to tell when danger's near, right? Who's to say you don't have that same power?"

"For one, my life isn't a superhero comic," said Danny.

"What should we call it? The 'Fishy Sense'? Yeah, that's perfect! Because 'fishy' also means 'suspicious'."

"Tucker, we don't even know that I _can_ detect danger. And, if somehow it turns out I can, we are not calling it that. That's a stupid name."

"Let me know when you think of a better one," said Tucker, crossing his arms. "Until then, I'm calling it your fishy sense."

The boy pulled out his PDA and started hitting buttons, typing something. Danny's curiosity got the better of him, and he made the mistake of asking what his friend was doing.

"I've been cataloguing your powers – their names, when they appeared, what you can do with them."

"And this is helpful… how?"

"For posterity!" said Tucker. "This is your origin story in the making, Danny."

"Not a superhero comic, Tuck."

"So, when did you first notice your water mode?"

Danny finally relented to his friend's game; when Tucker set his mind on something, he was a force to be reckoned with. "Uh… last Tuesday, I guess. At the swim meet."

Tucker gaped at him and returned to acting affronted. "You mean you've had this power for almost a week and you're only telling me now? No, I know, never mind…" He typed a few more words into his PDA and said, "Okay, I see. So when you freaked out at the meet, that was because-"

"Yeah. Water mode. The most annoying power ever."

"And today is the first time you've activated your fishy sense, right? You don't remember feeling anything when Dash, or the merpeople, or your parents, or the giant octopus-"

"-I get the point, Tuck." The list was getting too long. Besides, Dash was pre-merpeople!

"-attacked you?"

Danny shook his head. "No, nothing. That's why I'm telling you, I think it's a fluke. And we're _not_ calling it my fishy sense."

Just then, there was a piercing scream in the hallway, and the sense of unease along Danny's spine returned with a vengeance. All of the students in the cafeteria looked at each other before jumping up to run and see what was happening.

"Is your fishy sense tingling now?" asked Tucker as he, too, jumped to his feet.

Danny was already running after his classmates and didn't bother answering. Out in the hallway he was confronted by a wall of spectators packed around the entrance of the girl's bathroom, phones out and snapping pictures and gasping and pointing. Danny stood on tiptoe, trying to get a look at what was going on, but couldn't see past their heads and shoulders. He could sense it though. There was blood, and a lot of it.

Tucker appeared at his side. "Someone's hurt," Danny told him.

"How can you tell?"

"I can feel it."

"And you said your power was lame," said Tucker, chuckling nervously.

"People!" exclaimed Mr. Lancer, elbowing his way through the students. " _Make Room! Make Room!,_ people! How many times do I have to tell you? Go back to the cafeteria!"

He was thoroughly ignored, but in cooperation with each other the faculty members were able to set up a perimeter around the scene, pressing students back with sheer physical force. It wasn't until the teachers began threatening detention to any students still standing there in the next minute that the kids started to listen.

Danny used that opportunity to peek through the gaps in their legs and elbows. He finally saw it – lying on the floor in a puddle of blood and water was a girl. He didn't know her name, but he thought she was an upperclassman. More importantly, this girl had four long gashes across her stomach… they looked like claw marks.

Who had screamed? Was it her? Danny couldn't even tell if she was conscious, but based on the trail of blood and water, she'd been attacked in the bathroom and had collapsed here in the hall. Didn't that mean that whatever had done this… was still inside?

"Foley, Fenton!" barked Lancer. "Do you want a detention slip?"

"No, Mr. Lancer," said Tucker quickly, grabbing Danny's arm and tugging him away.

Back in the cafeteria, students were sitting and standing around, comparing photos and trading theories, or silently looking like they wanted to throw up.

Danny and Tucker sat down at their table again. Tucker leaned in close to Danny and whispered, "What did that?"

Danny shook his head. "I don't know. It attacked her in the bathroom. Huh - the bathroom…" He frowned at the table. Something about that seemed significant, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

"Those were claw marks, right? I know I don't have any experience with dead bodies, but those definitely looked like claw marks."

"She wasn't dead, Tucker."

"She sure looked dead to me, man…"

"No, her heart was still beating."

Tucker looked dumbfounded. "You could hear that, too? Danny, your water mode is the coolest power in your arsenal."

"I'd happily give it to you, if I could," Danny grumbled.

"Isn't this just like what happened to the janitor, though?"

"Huh? What happened to the janitor?"

Tucker hit a few buttons on his PDA and passed it to Danny. "Everyone's been talking about it. You didn't hear anything?"

There was every chance Danny had been too wrapped up in his head that day to hear or care about any of the gossip going around. Feeling more and more uncomfortable, he quickly read the article on Tuck's PDA:

_**Local high school janitor survives animal attack** _

_**AMITY BEACH, NORTH CAROLINA –** Local man Bob Briar was found on Sunday evening after what officials are calling an attack by a wild alligator._

_Briar, a janitor at Neptune High School, was locking the doors to the school on Sunday evening when the animal rushed at him from behind. While unable to clearly see the animal that attacked him, Briar described the animal as large, long, dark in color, and as being low to the ground._

_Briar was discovered shortly after the attack by William Lancer, the vice principal at Neptune High School, who happened to be in the parking lot at the time and heard Briar cry out. Briar sustained critical injuries to his stomach and legs and is currently recovering at Amity Beach General Hospital._

_Based on his description, city officials have declared that the animal is most likely an alligator that wandered on to the school campus. The animal in question has not been found, so there is a possibility that it is still in the area._

_A study released by North Carolina State University earlier this year indicates that big alligator sightings are becoming more frequent in this part of the state._

_Officials at the state Wildlife Resources Commission warn people to stay clear if they spot an alligator and to call a wildlife officer immediately. People should not try to remove it on their own and above all else should never try to feed it._

Danny felt cold. Maybe it was a good thing he had never made it to the high school on Sunday evening. This could have been him.

Or it could have been _Sam_. And because of Triton – no, because of _Danny_ – she had been here that night all by herself. Who knew how close she had come to running into the gator, too?

Danny shook his head. There was nothing he could have done, and nothing had happened besides. Sam was fine. He didn't need to beat himself up over that, not now.

He handed the PDA back to Tucker and was about to comment on it when the emergency alarm began to blare through the hallways. The students in the cafeteria stared at the flashing lights on the walls, screwing up their faces against the screechy recorded sirens, wondering if this was a drill… until one kid (who sounded suspiciously like Dash Baxter) yelled out:

"It's the alligator!"

After that, everyone began to scream and run out of the cafeteria through the double doors connected to the parking lot. Danny and Tucker met each other's wide eyes and, while not screaming, proceeded with great haste after their classmates.

For a few minutes, there was pure chaos, until teachers arrived and began herding the scattered students to the football field. There, the students were told to sit on the bleachers according to class and to please _, please_ not get up to any shenanigans or tomfoolery.

"I guess they're looking for the alligator," mused Tucker. He looked pale, and cold sweat was gleaming on his forehead. He took off his beret, wiped his arm across his head, and replaced the hat.

"I guess," Danny murmured. _Something about this doesn't feel right_.

Danny looked around at his classmates, wondering if anyone else was thinking that. To be honest, after the fun they had had screaming and running around, very few people seemed to be interested in the animal attack or the injured girl. They were more interested in the fact that they got to miss fifth period class and hang out with their friends on the bleachers instead.

Unable to pinpoint exactly what was bugging him, Danny decided to give water mode one more try, but carefully this time. Closing his eyes, Danny let his awareness expand gradually. At first, he could only hear his classmates, but after a few seconds he managed to filter them out, focusing instead on the school building nearby. It was a long shot, but he figured if he could locate a circulatory system in the shape of an alligator, he might be able to tell where the animal was hiding.

His water mode found a few heartbeats - human - spread throughout the building and a few in the parking lot. One belonged to the still-bleeding girl. Was she getting into an ambulance? Probably – she was moving, and people were carrying her.

Danny focused harder.

There was the puddle of blood and water in front of the girls' bathroom. Like he had noticed earlier, it stretched into the bathroom itself. Most of the girl's blood had been in the hallway, but there was a good amount of it just in front of the sinks, too. That must have been the place she was attacked. The trail of water didn't stop there, however. It continued right up to one of the toilets.

Danny took the bait. Trying not to think about his mind going down the toilet, Danny followed the pipes down the commode to where they connected to the city sewer system. Danny was glad he couldn't really see or smell any of this, because mentally syncing up to it was almost overwhelmingly disgusting. Part of him wondered why he was even doing this – because did he really expect to find a full-grown gator in a twelve-inch sewer pipe? – and he was one second away from withdrawing when he heard it. A heartbeat.

There was a circulatory system down there in the pipe. Its veins and blood stretched into a shape that was long, thin, four-legged, and tailed.

Danny's attention snapped back to the football field. "I can't believe it," he said.

"What is it?" asked Tucker. "You just used water mode, right? What did you find?"

Danny shook his head in disbelief. "It's in the sewer. There's an alligator in the sewer."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes about this chapter:
> 
> 1\. The prank Vlad seems to have instigated (or been put up to) in college was a real prank, performed by my uncle and his friends during their college days. They also liked to walk around campus wearing kilts, and if someone asked them what they were doing, they'd respond in a heavy accent: "We're lookin' for Scotland!"
> 
> 2\. Make Room! Make Room! is a book by Harry Harrison about overpopulation. This is the book the movie "Soylent Green" is based on.
> 
> 3\. My information about alligators in North Carolina was taken from an article in The Virginian Pilot (the Pilot Online) titled, "Gator sightings are up in North Carolina, and officials say to stay clear".


	15. Chapter 15

_I'm also fascinated by the difference between terror and fear. Fear says, "Do not actually put your hand in the alligator," while terror says, "Avoid Florida entirely because alligators exist."_

\- Mira Grant

* * *

"Danny, what you're saying happened sounds impossible. I'm not saying I would, but some – not me – might even say it's crazy."

Danny sat hunched on the edge of Tucker's bed, gnawing on the edge of his thumb while staring at the carpet. About half-way through fifth period, they had been sent home from school for their own safety and to allow authorities to check Neptune High from top to bottom for the itinerant alligator. Danny and Tucker, after going back to Tuck's place, had decided to do a little more digging, via the Internet, into what Danny had picked up on his mental radar.

The more they found out, the more incredulous Tucker became.

"Tucker, I know what I felt."

"Danny, let's lay out all of the facts. The janitor and the girl were attacked by an alligator, right? First of all, sewer alligators are an urban legend! But even saying it could happen, second of all, Amity Beach doesn't have large sewer pipes – the only ones big enough for a person to walk around in are downtown, and you said it yourself, the pipe where you found the gator was, like, a foot wide. If the alligator was big enough to attack those people, how do you expect it to fit into such a tiny pipe? Third of all, you're acting like it's been traveling around from toilet to toilet and playing Whack-a-Mole in reverse. Same problem – the only thing big enough to attack people and almost kill them, that can also squeeze itself up and down a toilet drain, is Santa Claus."

Danny kept gnawing on his thumb. The problem was that everything Tucker was saying made perfect sense. Even so, Danny didn't think he was wrong.

"Maybe it's not an alligator," said Danny.

"The janitor said it was an alligator," Tucker reminded him.

"No, the janitor didn't know what it was, so people _assumed_ it was an alligator," said Danny. He had found a thread, and the more he tugged at it, the more the alligator story seemed to unravel. He went on: "You saw those claw marks, Tuck. Did those look like they came from an alligator? And what kind of alligator leaves claw marks in the first place? Alligators _bite_ people. Plus, she was attacked in the bathroom. Those doors push inward from the outside. If she got attacked in there, the alligator would have still been inside, because last I checked, alligators can't open doors."

"So?" asked Tucker. "What was it?"

"Definitely not an alligator…"

"You don't think it's another size-shifting octopus, do you?" They had never come up with a theory for how the minivan-sized octopus that had nearly killed Danny the past week had shrunk down to the size of a regular octopus minutes after being killed.

Danny frowned. "It felt like an alligator."

"But you just said it _wasn't_ an alligator. So, is it an alligator or not?"

"I don't know!" Danny ran a hand through his hair, and his feet tapped the floor. "But I'm almost certain that whatever it is, it's using the sewer to travel around under the school. The same thing happened Saturday night-" Danny cut off when he realized Tucker wasn't supposed to know about Saturday.

"What about Saturday?"

Reluctantly, Danny explained, "There was another water trail in the hallway on Saturday night, too, only from a toilet in the boys' bathroom."

"How do you know that?"

Danny rubbed the back of his neck. "I might have… gone back to the pool that night…"

Tucker did not seem impressed, and he leveled a very unimpressed glare at his friend. "You're just dying for someone to catch you, aren't you? Why didn't you ask me to come with you?"

"I don't know, it's just… Tucker, you've been helping me with my powers so much recently, I'd feel bad to have to ask you to be my lookout all the time."

"Well, don't be! D, you getting merman powers is the coolest thing that's happened to either of us, ever. Of course I want to help you! And trust me, if I didn't want to be your lookout, or cover for you, or whatever, you'd be the first to know."

Danny apologized, and he didn't even need to feign to look appropriately guilty; he was guilty for a whole other reason.

"Anyway," said Tucker, shoulders slumping, "if what you're saying is true, and there's a sewer monster living under Neptune High…" His voice climbed an octave. "I'm never using the bathrooms at school again!"

Feeling restless, Danny slid off of the edge of the bed onto the floor, next to where he'd placed the (now empty) plate of cookies and glass of lemonade that Mrs. Foley had brought up for him earlier. He took the glass in his hand and eyed the water collected in the bottom where the ice had melted. He placed his palm over the top of the glass and guided the water up to it. Soon, he had a little globe of water about the size of a ping-pong ball, which he set about changing into a few different shapes – a cube, a pyramid, a donut.

"Shouldn't we do something?" he said to Tucker, eyes focused on the water he was manipulating. Tucker didn't answer, and when Danny looked up it was to find his friend gawking at him. "What?"

Tucker waggled his hands at the water hovering in mid-air. "That! Since when can you just casually do that?"

Danny shrugged. "I've been practicing." Outside of his two sessions at the pool, Danny had been making an effort the last two days to use his aquapathy skill as often as possible – when he took his covert 'showers', when he washed the dishes, when he was relaxing in his room.

"So, the next time I throw my Mega Nasty Drink at your face-"

"Yeah, I think I could throw it right back. And then eat you." He smirked when the grin dropped from Tucker's face. "My threat still holds, Tuck."

He sighed and returned his gaze to the water, growing melancholy once more. He changed the water back into a sphere and set it spinning in place. "But seriously, what should we do? They're looking for an alligator, not a sewer monster that pops out of toilets and tries to skewer people. They're not going to find it."

"We're still not a hundred percent certain we're dealing with a sewer monster," Tucker pointed out. "Or any percent certain. It could even be gone tomorrow."

"And if it's not?" said Danny. "Someone else is going to get hurt."

"We could try telling Mr. Lancer." Even Tucker didn't sound a whit convinced.

"Oh yeah," said Danny mockingly. "I'll just go up and say, 'Hi, Mr. Lancer, so, I happen to have special powers that allow me to divine that the alligator is not an alligator at all but is actually a sewer monster that attacks students by way of toilet.'" He shot Tucker a derisive look. "Something tells me that's not going to work."

"Well, I don't see anything else we _can_ do, besides going and finding it ourselves." At Danny's meaning-laden silence, Tucker added, "You know I was kidding, right?"

"Tucker, if we know about it and we don't do anything, and someone else gets hurt, doesn't that make us responsible?"

"No," said the tech-nerd, "that makes us not idiots. Danny, look at us. You're Dash Baxter's personal punching bag, and I bruise when people look at me the wrong way. The only thing separating us from the bottom of the food chain of guys our age is Mikey already being at the bottom of the food chain. What could we possibly do?"

"I killed that octopus," Danny said quietly.

"Yeah, by accident!" said Tucker.

Danny raised his head. "Tucker, ever since I got these powers, you've been acting like I'm supposed to be killing sea monsters and being a superhero, and now that I actually want to use them to help someone, you're saying it's a bad idea."

"I'm saying I don't want you to die!" Tucker sighed; he took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Look, Danny, I know what I've been saying, and maybe I got carried away – no, I definitely got carried away. You were right, your life isn't a superhero comic, and I'm sorry for acting like it was. Okay? And whatever's going on right now, it's just not our responsibility."

"Fine," Danny muttered.

"Besides," said Tucker optimistically, "if we're lucky it'll be gone tomorrow, and no one has to be responsible for anything one way or another!"

* * *

First period class the next day had been replaced with an assembly, and all of the students were packed into the gym to listen to a wildlife expert explain the dangers of alligators and what students should do when coming face-to-face with one in their high school.

The gator was _no longer on campus_ , the expert stressed again and again, lest any students be feeling frightened. This was purely hypothetical, he said, only it wasn't really, because it had happened twice now and had every chance of happening again. But students _shouldn't be frightened._

Danny only half-listened to the presentation. The other half of his attention was trained on the pipes, and on a conspicuous heartbeat that did not belong there.

Despite Tucker's relentless optimism and best wishes, it was not gone. At the moment, the creature was sitting motionless in a pipe dead-center underneath Neptune High, and since Danny had gotten to school that morning it hadn't moved an inch. He had the distinct impression that it was waiting for its next prey to be alone, because with the entire population of the high school crammed into one room, there was no way it was going to show its face.

Keeping his attention on it was exhausting, but Danny didn't dare let his focus slip. It was like when you noticed a large spider on the ceiling. It wouldn't move for an hour, but as soon as you took your eyes off of it, it would disappear.

He hardly noticed when the assembly ended and only got up from his seat when Tucker pulled at his elbow.

"What's it doing?" the other boy whispered.

"Nothing," Danny mumbled.

"Then why does your face look so scary?"

Thinking about it, his expression felt as taut as a steel wire. His entire body did. No wonder he felt so tired. He shook his head. "Water mode."

"Dude, give it a break. You look like you're going to pass out."

"But-"

"If it tries anything, your fishy sense will go off, right?"

 _Only when it's too late_ , he thought bitterly. But Tucker was right. He couldn't keep this up anymore. He reluctantly pulled his attention away from the heartbeat under the school, back into the auditorium and then to his own head. Immediately, a wave of light-headedness crashed over him, causing him to stumble. Tucker caught him by the arm before he crashed into the students next to them.

"How long were you in water mode?"

"Since we got to school," Danny panted. His whole body felt shaky, and cold sweat beaded his forehead. He hoped if it turned his skin merman-white, his hair would sufficiently hide it. Listening that intently to something far away took a lot more energy than the general hyper-awareness he was getting used to. He hadn't realized until now just how much energy.

Tucker looked torn between worry and exasperation. He scolded Danny, "You definitely inherited 'paranoid' from your parents."

"I'm not paranoid," Danny protested weakly.

"Whatever you say, man."

They parted in the hallway for their respective classes, but Danny could feel Tucker's worried glances following him until he turned a corner. Through his second period class, Danny resisted the urge to check on the creature again, which was pretty easy, because the thought of going back into water mode made him feel nauseous. As the hour passed and there weren't any alarms or screams echoing through the hallways, Danny gradually relaxed.

Third period was P.E. with Coach Tetslaff. Tetslaff was one of Danny's least favorite teachers, and he had the pleasure of having two classes with her daily – P.E. in the morning and Health Ed after lunch. She was six-foot tall and had the musculature of a linebacker, and while he tried not to hold these things against her, he'd never met a woman as large as his dad and it was hard not to be intimidated in her presence. Maybe his dislike also stemmed from the fact that her physique wasn't the only thing she had in common with the football team. She was the only teacher he'd ever had who'd gone past mere indifference towards him straight to bullying.

On the first day of classes, calling roll, she must have seen the note next to his name excusing him from swimming, and she had decided to announce it to the entire class. "Fenton, Daniel! Oh, says here you can't swim! What are the odds your parents are ocean nuts and their son can't even swim?" Danny's face had turned beet red, and his classmates had all snickered at him. Since then, he had tried to avoid Testlaff's attention, but his physical weakness made him the perfect target for her reproaches.

At least he wasn't the only one. Tucker, who had gym with Mikey, said they received a big portion of her ire, too. It was a hard life for nerds. Biologically, they just weren't made for sports.

Today was even worse. Danny was still feeling shaky after overexerting himself that morning, and he could hardly put one foot in front of the other. In their dodge ball game – and why was it always dodge ball? – he tripped over his own foot while trying to side-step a ball flying toward his face, and banged his chin on the floor when he hit the ground. A ball struck him in the back a second later, and it must have still been within the confines of 'good sportsmanship', because Testlaff yelled, "OUT, Fenton! Now get out of the way so your team has a chance at winning!"

Danny was more than happy to go to the sidelines. Rubbing his smarting chin, he scrambled out of the warzone to the benches. In the next few minutes, several more members of his team were struck out, including Sam Manson. Seeing as how the others took every seat not next to Danny, she grudgingly sat down beside him.

He tried not to look at her. There were a lot of things he wanted to tell her – he was sorry for missing their meeting; he wanted to hang out with her again; she needed to be careful because there was a monster living in the sewers and attacking students, _Chamber of Secrets_ style. He wrung his hands.

"You're bleeding," Sam pointed out.

"Huh?" said Danny intelligently when he realized she was talking to him.

"Your chin?"

Danny wiped it with the back of his hand. Sure enough, he was bleeding. Frowning, he held the back of his hand against it to apply pressure. Absently, he watched another boy being chewed out by Testlaff across the court, apparently for needing to go to the bathroom. A few seconds later, the teacher relented, jabbed her thumb at the locker rooms, and the boy gratefully jogged away.

"You look worse than usual," said Sam.

"Thanks," Danny groaned. Remembering her comments about 'Danny Fenton' at the pool, and how she'd called him a jerk the day before, he found himself saying, "Look, I'm sorry about yesterday." Sam raised a brow but didn't say anything. Danny continued, "I didn't mean to call you crazy. You're right. I was a jerk."

"Was, as in past tense?"

Danny scowled. So much for an apology. He prodded his chin again, and his fingers came away dry. The bleeding had stopped.

"Sorry," said Sam, sighing. "That wasn't very nice either."

"No, I get it. You don't like me, and probably for good reason. Whatever you say, I probably deserve it."

The girl winced. Just then, a shiver climbed up Danny's spine, and he gasped, straightening in his seat. Sam kept talking, but Danny barely listened. He flipped his mind into water mode and threw out his awareness like a net.

"I'm probably just as guilty," Sam was saying. "I was quick to judge you, but I'm sure you've got a lot in your life that you're dealing with. I shouldn't just assume-"

There. Danny found it in the locker rooms on the other side of the gym. It was small, but it was getting bigger and growing fast. Then Danny felt the second heartbeat close by and realized – that guy who had just gone to the bathroom was about to get torn to ribbons.

"Sorry, bathroom," he said, jumping to his feet and sprinting around to the other side of the gym.

Luckily Testlaff was busy berating another kid for her terrible aim and Danny made it to the locker room door without being intercepted. He crashed through the door to the boys' locker room, sped to the end and skidded around the corner to the toilets and showers.

And promptly slipped on the wet tiles, fell on his back, and winded himself. Gasping, he scrambled to his feet, ignoring the tingling over his palms and back where his skin had met puddle.

The other boy, a short kid named Terry who had been Danny's classmate since junior high, looked over at him from the urinals. He was as yet oblivious to the ugly brown monster that had been eyeing him from under a stall door, and if he had noticed the water pooled on the floor, hadn't attributed it to anything more suspicious than a high school locker room's already inherent suspiciousness. Fortunately for Terry, the monster was just as distracted by Danny's undignified entrance, and he was given the chance to pull up his gym shorts and walk out, remembering to snicker, "Fenturd" as he passed.

Fenturd. Bathroom. It was Danny's least favorite nickname Dash had bestowed on him, but he had to give Terry credit for his timing.

Then again, he had more important things on his mind.

Like the monster crawling out from under the stalls.

It was definitely not an alligator.

* * *

Sam gaped at Danny's retreating back. Whatever she had been saying, she took it all back. Triton was wrong. Danny Fenton, who didn't even have the decency to listen to her apology to the end, didn't deserve the olive branch she had been about to offer him. So what if he, _maybe_ , had a difficult life? She didn't care. That didn't excuse anything.

"Jerk," she muttered venomously.

* * *

The monster seemed to be made entirely out of mud. It reminded Danny of a salamander, more than anything, if salamanders had semi-solid bodies made of goop, had scythe-like black claws, and could change sizes at will. Danny didn't know where it was getting the extra body mass from, but as he watched its form rippled and burgeoned outwards, until it was at least seven feet long and pretty thick around. Danny half expected it to start dripping mud all over the floor, but the stuff that made its body seemed very clingy.

It hissed at Danny, pulling its gloopy lips back in a snarl and revealing two rows of unpleasantly pointy teeth.

Then it crawled _up the wall_ above the urinals and rushed at him.

Danny pulled out of his stupor just in time to jump out of the way when it leaped towards him. The monster landed as one big pile of muck against the floor, and was fluidly rebuilding itself. Danny crawled away from it through the pooling toilet water on the floor and very bravely hid in a stall, locking the flimsy plastic door behind him.

He stared at his white hands, his fingers webbed and clawed, hovering above the lock. Black ridges of fins were forming on his damp forearms. His arms and hands were trembling. His whole body was. His heart felt as if it was flopping around in his chest like a dying fish. He had no idea what to do.

 _What could we possibly do?_ Tucker had asked.

 _I killed the octopus_ , Danny reminded himself. And this time, he actually knew what he was doing.

Danny closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to focus on all of the water in the room. Just then, the creature slammed, screeching, into the door, rattling the entire row of stalls and cracking the plastic. Danny jumped up onto the toilet seat and then onto the tank, supporting his weight with his hands pressed against the stalls on either side of him.

"C'mon, Fenton, you can do this." He tried not to think of the alternative, which was probably death, or at least some serious maiming.

Crud, and there he'd gone and thought about it.

Danny used his foot to flush the toilet, and as water flowed from the tank into the bowl, he drew it steadily into a ball in the air in front of him. It was as large as a baseball, then a basketball, then a beach ball, larger than anything he'd purposefully controlled before.

The monster body-slammed the door again, and the door broke in half and clattered to the ground. Danny looked into the creature's hungry, beady eyes and gulped; the next time it jumped, it would probably swallow him whole.

Then it sprang toward him, and Danny forgot about fashioning a weapon. He just flung up his arms over his face, squeezed his eyes shut, and prepared for a lot of pain.

Instead, there was a tugging sensation in his stomach and the sound of a very upset mud monster smashing into a urinal. Danny peaked open his eyes to see a wall of water suspended across the entrance to the stall, still quivering from the impact. He lowered his arms, and the water splashed over the ground.

The monster writhed and screamed as the busted urinal pipe sprayed high-pressure water directly through its stomach. It tried to roll off of the torrent, but only succeeded in hurting itself more. Danny took the opportunity to climb out of the broken stall and scramble toward the exit, careful to keep his feet dry; wherever he stepped, the water jumped out of his way.

He stopped at the corner and looked back at the struggling creature, thinking it was probably done for. He became certain when all at once the monster slid to the ground in a shapeless heap of muck.

Or he was certain, until he realized that the mud puddle was not so much shrinking as condensing, and gradually regrowing its tail and legs and head. Like a snake, it slithered toward one of the stalls and disappeared down the commode with an unappealing 'shloop' noise.

Danny blinked after it. No way. It had escaped just… just like that. Leaving Danny with a half-destroyed and gradually flooding bathroom.

He crept back toward the gym, flinging water off of his arms and legs until they looked like normal again. His shirt and shorts were stubbornly damp, but hopefully they would cover up the patches of scales on his body. He hoped his hair hadn't changed colors too badly.

Back in the gymnasium, the last of the dodge ball warriors on the court were trying to finish the game while Testlaff watched on with pride. Danny gulped and approached his teacher. He made a small noise at her elbow, and then a louder one, and finally she glared down at him.

"What is it, Fenton?"

"Um, so… one of the urinals exploded."

The coach's scowl was momentarily uncomprehending. She turned the scowl toward the locker rooms and skulked away to investigate. Danny wondered if she would find a way to blame him and dreaded her return, but just then the bell rang. As his classmates rushed to the locker rooms to change clothes, Danny rushed in the opposite direction, away from the gym.

* * *

He hesitated to tell Tucker about how he'd almost gotten himself eaten. Because he knew, just _knew_ , Tucker would say,

"I told you! I told you it was a bad idea, but did you listen? No. You never listen!"

Danny was too tired and shaken to argue. No matter how much time passed, he couldn't stop shivering, even after sneaking back to the gym for his regular, dry clothes just before lunch. "You're right. I thought I could fight it, but I mostly panicked. And then when it got hurt it just melted and escaped. I don't think it made any difference. But… No, I was right about one thing, Tucker. If I hadn't gone there when I did, someone else _would_ have gotten hurt."

"Sure, _Terry_. No big loss there."

"Tucker, just because we don't like him doesn't mean he deserves to die."

Tuck pouted. "Yeah, well…"

"So, my question again – how am I supposed to stop this thing?"

"Not by stabbing it with a water spear, apparently," said the techno-geek. "And _my_ question again – who says _you're_ supposed to stop it?"

Danny sighed, and again didn't argue. He hoped his silence said enough.

"Where is it now?"

Danny shrugged. He didn't feel up to trying to look again. "It looked like it was weakened. Let's hope it skulked off somewhere dark and smelly to recover and won't be attacking anyone else today."

The next few classes passed without incident, although Danny's shivers never quite let up. It might have had something to do with the angry vibes directed his way through Health class, from both Testlaff _and_ Sam. Although what else he'd done to earn Sam's wrath, he wasn't sure.

When he was still trembling in Math class, Danny began to suspect something was wrong. Yeah, he'd been pretty shaken up by the incident that morning, but the mud monster still had nothing on the giant octopus, which he had recovered from way faster than this. The pervasive unease was beginning to make him feel… well, uneasy.

And when water dripped onto his head from one of the ceiling panels in the middle of class, Danny _knew_ something was wrong. For the first time in hours, Danny let his awareness drift out, scouting all of the liquids nearby.

What he found made his bones feel like jelly. He understood that the shakes were not from fear or exhaustion – his danger sense had been going off for hours.

The monster was in the ceiling, standing right over his head.

It was following him.


	16. Chapter 16

_If there was magic in this world, it happened within sight of the three bases and home plate._

\- Tee Morris

* * *

"We've got a problem," said Danny, dropping into his seat next to Tucker in Spanish class.

"You mean the problem where we have a pop prueba today, and 'prueba' is the only Spanish word I can remember besides 'taco'? Or do you mean a mud monster problem?"

"Uh, when you put it like that…"

"Danny, you need to tell me this kind of stuff after pruebas!"

Señora Lawson passed out their pop quizzes, and Danny could feel how Tuck was sweating bullets through the whole thing. He could also feel the creature crouching in the girls' restroom on the other side of the wall, like its eyes were focused on his back. It was hard to answer any questions, and Danny filed this assignment as a 'miss' – one of many in the creeping downward path of his grades.

Spanish class happened, and neither Danny nor Tucker _comprendieron_ _nada_. As they left the room, Danny grabbed Tucker's arm and pulled him to the side of the doorway, out of the stream of students. He was slightly panting from the exertion of once again putting half of his mind on the mud monster's whereabouts.

"It's following me," said Danny without preamble.

"You mean-"

"It's been stalking me ever since our fight in the locker room. I think it's waiting to get me alone." He was still shivering, his danger sense going haywire. There must have been a lot of ill intent coming off of that salamander… thing.

"You made it mad," said Tucker.

"You think?" grumbled Danny.

"Lucky for you," said the technophile, whipping out his PDA, "I've been doing some research since lunch."

Hope stirred in Danny's chest. "You found something?"

"You know it! Mud monsters have been in tons of movies and comic books. Like Clayface in the DC Universe? Totally a mud monster."

The hope fizzled out like a wet match. What had he expected? Everything in his life these days was something out of a fantasy novel, so why would there be any real knowledge out there?

"Wait, wait, before you go dissing movie wisdom, listen – the Internet concurs that the best ways to kill clay monsters are to freeze them, give them an antidote, blow them up, or dry them out. They need water to live, so obviously water's not going to kill them."

"Hence why it's traveling in the pipes…" muttered Danny, not seeing how this helped them much. "Water is the only weapon I've got, Tuck. It's not like we've got monster antidotes and freeze rays lying around or anything."

"But what if we can get it away from water?" said Tucker. "You said it's following you. So let's lure it somewhere where we can-"

"Use a giant hair dryer on it?"

"Always the critic," said Tucker, shoving the PDA back into his pants pocket.

Danny chewed his lip. The creature was stirring in the pipes. It probably could tell that the building was emptying out and it was getting restless to catch its prey – _him_. Something told Danny it wouldn't stop even if he left Neptune High. It would just follow him home and try to claw him up in his sleep.

"Where should we lead it?"

"You want to try?" said Tucker.

"I don't have much of a choice. Let's try getting it away from water long enough for it to dry out. We just need to find somewhere without any water. The problem is… there's water _everywhere_." Danny knew that all too well now. "And did I mention it's really good at climbing?"

"What about the baseball field?" said Tucker. "That place is really dusty."

"The baseball field?" Danny threw a line of his attention toward it and could hardly sense anything. It was a place that had no grass, no water fountains, and not a single pipe running under it - definitely dry. The problem was all of the people running around there. "Isn't the baseball team kind of using it?"

"They finish practice by five o'clock most days. And before you ask, I only know that because I memorized their schedule instead of the softball team's by mistake. So, we just have to keep you from being eaten until then."

"You make it sound so easy." Danny heaved a sigh but then smiled. "Thanks for helping me, Tuck."

"I told you, man, I don't want you to die. If that means I have to save your butt when you pick fights with mud monsters, of course I'm in." Tucker's voice shook as he said it; clearly he was scared. Danny never once felt happier to have him as his best friend.

* * *

They bided their time at the Nasty Burger, in the comfortable safety of the multitudes of fast food connoisseurs. Sure enough, the creature had followed them there and was now lurking in the vicinity of the Nasty toilets.

Tucker stuffed himself with burgers and fries – "stress eating", he called it – but Danny was too worn out to eat. He didn't dare break his focus on the monster, lest it decide to surprise him, or worse, attack another innocent bystander. He heard its heartbeat so distinctly that it was as if his own heart was syncing up to it.

Five o'clock came and went, and they returned to the high school, along the best-lit and busiest streets possible. The baseball field came in sight, nestled at the bottom of a hill about a block from the main high school building, and like Tucker promised it was deserted.

"You're going to have to go down first," Danny said. "It might not come out if you're around me. I'll lead it to the ambush."

"And I'll be there ready to, uh, call out encouraging comments!" said Tucker. More seriously, he said, "Be safe, Danny." He turned and jogged down to the field.

"Alright, Ugly," Danny muttered. "Get ready to play ball."

… He was glad no one was in earshot of that. _Note to self – work on witty banter._

Danny wandered toward the running track and the little water fountain near it. The monster was clearly tired of waiting. Before Danny got within five feet of the fountain, the creature shoved its way out of the pipes with such force that the fountain nozzle burst into the air. Danny watched the creature warily as it pooled on the ground, wriggling and stretching into shape. It was even bigger this time, more than ten feet long from its flat head to the tip of its tail. The claws solidified into deadly black daggers. It screeched at him through its teeth. And it charged.

On pure instinct, Danny made a sweeping gesture with his hands, and the discharge from the busted fountain slammed into the monster from the side, sending it sprawling across the grass.

Danny ran. It occurred to him that his powers really did work better when his life was in danger.

The creature slipped and slid in the grass for a few seconds before rearranging its limbs to a better location on its body. Then it charged again.

Meanwhile Danny sprinted down the hill to the baseball diamond. His senses thrummed, picking up the blood pumping hard through his veins, the swishy ever-shifting circulatory system of the creature pursuing him, Tucker's panicky heartbeat in the dugout, and the bone-dry dirt field ahead. If the creature needed water now, it would have to burrow straight through the ground.

He hit the bottom of the hill too fast and tumbled head over heels into the outfield. The monster leaped over him and crashed into the ground several feet away, sending dust blooming into the air in a cloud. The dry dirt stuck to the monster in a light orange coating of powder. It didn't seem to mind. Its tail swished aggressively, and several round flaps rose out of its neck, fluttering around the crown of its head.

Danny was still struggling to his feet when it advanced again.

"Hey Stinky!" Tucker cried. "Heads up!"

A second later, a baseball bounced harmlessly off of the monster's back. Even though there hadn't been any force behind the hit, Danny couldn't help but be impressed with Tuck's aim with a bat. He was standing all the way at home plate.

And it certainly did the trick. The monster's head flaps jerked straight up, and it turned menacingly to look behind it. Danny took the chance to run towards first base, waving his arms and saying a lot of rude things like "Now I know why your owner flushed you down the toilet!" that weren't particularly clever and probably couldn't be understood by the monster anyway. It didn't seem to appreciate all of the shouting and jumping around, though, and switched targets again.

It was just as fast as before and pounded over the dirt like a charging bull.

"I don't think this is working!" Danny shouted.

"Nope!" Tucker shouted back, holding out his baseball bat like a shield, his knees visibly knocking.

Danny couldn't run very much further, and he realized now that not only had they cut off the creature from water, they'd cut him off, too. He was completely vulnerable out here.

"Not liking this plan!" he yelled as he changed directions and sprinted to second base. He bought a few more seconds as the monster had such momentum that it couldn't turn quickly.

If only he had –

Danny's eyes widened at the beast thundering towards him. He _did_ have water. The monster was full of water. It was almost nothing but water.

Its heartbeat pounded in his ears in time with his own. It wasn't pushing blood through the creature, it was circulating water, and that's how the creature could grow as big or small as it wanted. The more water it absorbed, the more it could spread its body, and when it expelled the water it could condense down again, like some kind of disgusting poo balloon.

The monster reared up, towering over Danny, pulling back its claw-tipped arm. Danny took a deep breath and shoved his hands forward, straight at the monster's heart.

A column of water crashed into the ground behind it, and the creature collapsed on itself, crumbling over Danny.

Slowly the debris settled. Danny coughed out a plume of dirt – or what he really, _really_ hoped was just dirt. He looked down at his right hand, pouring monster dust off of his head, and saw a strange little lizard clasped in his fist.

Tucker ran up to him and fell to his knees in the pile of monster surrounding Danny. "Are you okay? How did you-? Man, I thought it was going to eat us! I thought you were a goner!"

"I'm okay," said Danny, a little dazed. He held up the lizard. "Any idea what this is?"

The other boy frowned at it. "Pretty sure it's dead," he said finally. His eyebrows suddenly shot up. "That's your Chihuahua-pus! The, the, you know-"

"The little animal inside the big impossible monster?" finished Danny. "That's what I'm afraid of." He didn't like the implications of that. It meant that the octopus and this thing that had attacked his school were connected somehow, not just freak occurrences. _That_ meant there might be a lot more of these things out there.

"You should take a picture with it!" said Tucker. He pulled out his PDA and raised it to eye level. "Say 'cheese'!"

Danny didn't say 'cheese'. He chucked the dead monster lizard at his friend instead, which actually made for a pretty good photograph in the end.

* * *

Danny lowered his legs into the water. The ache of their exhaustion turned into a new ache as the bones and muscles rearranged under his skin – or rather, under his scales. He grimaced, and his tired arms were quivering holding him up at the edge of the pool. Taking a deep breath, he let go and plummeted.

Opening his eyes, he saw how his bioluminescent skin and bright green eyes reflected off of the walls and off of particles in the water. Danny pushed off of the wall with his hands and floated into the middle of the pool. The water held his body in a gentle, warm embrace.

He surfaced again when he needed to breathe and lay on his back in the waves of the pool. For a long time he did nothing but stare at the night sky through the upper windows and listen to the water lapping against the walls of the pool.

He'd gone back to Tucker's house after their victory – and after changing into clean clothes at his own house and dumping the monster-coated ones into the laundry basket. He didn't know how he was going to explain that to his mom, but that was a problem for later. Tuck's mom fed them, what was for Tucker a second dinner and for Danny a much-needed first one. Promising to do homework, they went upstairs and Tucker tried to find a match for their lizard friend online while Danny struggled to keep his eyes open on the bed behind him.

The best Tucker could tell from photos, and Danny agreed, it was a type of water-dwelling salamander called a mud puppy. Mud puppies didn't generally slather themselves in protective layers of mud, nor did they tend to have razor sharp claws or eat anything larger than bugs. Nevertheless, this lucky little mud puppy had gotten hold of monster steroids or something and had gotten decked out in a bad and really gross way.

That mystery solved, Danny decided to leave before he fell asleep. Back outside, he could smell the sea salt on the cool breeze from the ocean. His body hurt all over, and he felt drained from over-exerting himself the whole day. Part of him wanted to curl up in bed and sleep for a month, yeah, but another part of him wanted nothing more than to go down to the beach and drift out to sea under the stars.

That part of him won with a compromise. Now he drifted between the lane ropes in the pool at Neptune High, careful not to inhale the toxic chlorinated water…

Or not. He must have nodded off, because the next thing he knew, there was a terrible burning sensation in his gills. He choked and spluttered, flailing a bit in the water. He got control over his limbs enough to swim to the wall where he clung as he filled his lungs with air again.

"Did you fall asleep?"

Danny's tail hit the wall painfully as he startled, and he almost lost his grip. Sam was sitting on the bleachers not ten feet away, watching him with an amused smile.

"What-?" he gasped, forgetting himself. He tried again: **What are you doing here?**

Her violet eyes widened at the sound of his voice. "You can talk!"

He looked away. **Yeah. I can also grow two legs and walk around. So what?**

Sam didn't reply, and eventually Danny looked back at her. He was still confused about why she had been so upset at him – at _Fenton_ – earlier, and a weird mix of emotions were playing in his head.

"Are you okay?" the girl asked, looking pensive. "You seem… I don't know, worn out."

 **Yeah,** he said. He closed his eyes and laid his forehead against the edge of the wall. **Long day.**

"Do you want to talk about it?"

He didn't really, but at the same time, he'd been trying to figure out how to see Sam again, and here she was. **I fought a mutant, man-eating mud puppy.**

It sounded ridiculous. Sam's face screwed up, and Danny started to chuckle. At once, they both burst out laughing. "Seriously?" said Sam once they had calmed down again.

 **Honest** , he replied. **It was coming out of toilets and attacking people.**

"Nasty." Sam shuddered, though it wasn't clear that she grasped the reality of the situation.

**You can't even imagine.**

"Is my toilet safe?"

 **Probably. But if not, you know who to call.** That had to be the dorkiest line ever, but it made Sam smirk, in a good way. Danny saw his skin glowing a shade brighter.

"Is that why you haven't been here? I was afraid you were in a cage somewhere."

**Yeah. I'm sorry. I wanted to tell you, but I didn't know how.**

"If we're going to be friends, we need a better way to keep in contact," she said, grinning. Danny grinned back, showing his pointy canines, and glowed even more.

Sam came down off of the bleachers and sat cross-legged a few inches away from him. She was wearing gym shorts, flip-flops, and a black one-piece bathing suit under a windbreaker. A pair of swim goggles hung at her neck. Danny looked at all of this, puzzled. **Err, do you want to swim?**

She looked equally puzzled. "Is that okay? You wouldn't feel uncomfortable?"

He shrugged. **It's a big pool. It doesn't seem fair for me to hog it.**

"If you're sure," she replied. Sam stood and stripped off her jacket and her shorts. Even knowing all she had underneath was a swimsuit, Danny averted his eyes and hoped Sam didn't notice how he was burning like a light bulb. At last, with her hair tied in a simple ponytail and her goggles strapped over her eyes, Sam came back to the side of the pool. She flashed a smile at Danny and jumped.

The water splashed from her impact and bubbles roared around her as she sunk. Extending her arms and legs, she pushed downwards and rose back to the surface. Water streamed over her, dripping on her teeth as she smiled again.

"To be honest, jumping is always my favorite part," she admitted, like it was something to be ashamed of.

Danny chuckled and said, **I wouldn't know.** The only memories he had of flying through the air towards water involved Dash and his boat and were not pleasant.

"You've never tried? Not even like a dolphin jump?"

**Is that a thing?**

"Like this?" Treading water with one arm, Sam mimed a dolphin arcing out of the water with the other. "Don't tell me you've never done that!"

Danny shrugged. **Sorry, I've never tried it. Al _though_... I guess there's no time like the present.** If Sam thought his mind-speaking and aquapathy powers were cool, there was no way she wouldn't be impressed by how well he could swim.

"And no truer words were ever spoken by a merboy," the girl replied, gesturing to the length of the pool in invitation.

Sam hung onto a wall while Danny sucked in a deep breath and dived to the bottom. He swam a few laps around, partly to build up speed and partly to show off, knowing Sam would be able to see him clearly thanks to his bioluminescence. When he'd gotten enough momentum, he turned sharply to the center of the pool and shot up toward the surface.

The next second, his whole body was in the air, tail and all. Danny twisted, having suddenly lost all bearings, and started waving his arms around in panic. And the next second, he hit the water, landing flat on his stomach, like the pool had reached up and slapped him.

Danny groaned and rolled over onto his back. His entire front from chest to tailfin stung. Sam, meanwhile, was guffawing.

"That… was awful!" she told him between sobs of laughter. Great. Even with superpowers, he was still Fenton the Klutz. His pelvic fins slapped the surface of the water in his frustration.

 **I'd like to see you do better,** he told her.

"Is that a challenge?" she teased. Danny flicked water towards her with his tailfin and smirked. "Okay, you're on! But let's at least choose something a mere human like me can hope to win. How about a diving contest?" She pulled herself out of the pool and walked over to the bleachers for her bag. After digging around, she retrieved a small coin purse shaped like a dark purple spider. She dumped the contents into her palm, walked back to the pool, and then flung the coins across the water.

"The person who collects the most money – not the most coins, necessarily – wins."

**What's the prize?**

"All the money in my coin purse."

 **Fair enough.** Sam was super rich, so Danny wouldn't feel bad about stealing a couple of bucks from her.

"Last rule. This side of the pool is mine. That side," she said, pointing opposite, "is yours. We can only grab one coin at a time, and have to bring it to our own side of the pool before we can go back."

 **Got it**. Danny swam to the opposite wall and gave a thumbs-up to show he was ready. He decided right away to hold back a little and at least give Sam a fighting chance. He wasn't going to let her win, though. Not after she had laughed at him so much.

"Start!" said Sam, and immediately she dived off of the wall. Danny took a deep breath and curled into the water, pressing his arms against his sides and thrusting downward with his tail.

As the floor approached seconds later, he realized he had another advantage on her – he was his own flashlight. If they were looking for the most valuable coins, it would be easy for Danny to pick out the quarters and dimes. He quickly found George Washington's face and plucked it up with his claws. Just as he turned back to the surface, Sam arrived; Danny could see a blurry reflection of himself off of the black lenses of her goggles.

The game took several minutes. Even with how tired he was after fighting the mud monster, there was just no beating merpeople for speed. He was holding back, but he still surfaced twice as often as Sam and had a growing collection of Washingtons and FDRs. The only hard part for Danny was holding his breath so much.

He dove one more time, grabbed a nickel, and paused to look around. There was only one more coin – a penny – and it was Sam's. He hung around until she swam back down and told her, **That's the last one,** pointing one clawed finger at the coin. She nodded, gave him an 'okay' sign, and grabbed it.

They hung onto their respective walls, gasping for breath. Sam removed her goggles and slid them on top of her head. "Okay?" she called out.

 **Yeah!** he said, and turned to take a head count. Six quarters, five dimes, three nickels, and no pennies. It was a good haul, for his first game of diving-for-dough. **Two dollars and fifteen cents,** he told her when he'd done the math.

"Nice!" she replied. "I've got three dollars eight cents."

Danny frowned. **No way.** He scooped up his coins and swam across the pool to her. When he arrived, she waved a sweeping hand across her coins, and sure enough, three gold-colored dollar coins glinted up at him.

"Sacagawea dollars. I knew you would go after the quarters, so I grabbed these before you knew they were there."

 **That's not fair,** he protested. **How was I supposed to know you had dollar coins?**

"Sorry," Sam shrugged, grinning smugly. "When you're a human up against a mythical creature, you have to play dirty. Anyone who's read the _Odyssey_ knows that. So," she extended a palm, "pay up."

He handed the coins back to her, trying to act disappointed for losing. As he opened his hand over hers to drop the change, his claws brushed her skin, and he saw Sam shiver. Danny immediately pulled back and clenched his fist to hide the thick black nails.

 **Sorry,** he said, looking away. **I know they're creepy…**

He felt Sam shifting nearby, but he was not expecting it when her water-pruned fingers wrapped gently over his fist. He was too surprised to resist when she pulled his hand toward her and started uncurling his fingers.

 **Slimy, right?** he said nervously while she studied the pearly, webbed, clawed hands. **And cold?**

"They're not cold at all," she said. "Or slimy. Your skin's a little smoother than human skin, but that's the only difference."

Danny stared at her, and eventually she looked up at him. Their eyes met, green and violet, and a moment later they both looked away. Sam dropped his hand. "And that was me violating your personal space! My bad!"

He swallowed, not trusting himself to project his thoughts into her head. Who knew what kind of stupidity would slip through?

Sam was talking again, really quickly. "I've been initiating a lot of awkward encounters today. Seems like that's what I'm good at, huh? Queen of Awkward Encounters, Sam Manson. That's me."

 **Do you want to just swim again?** said Danny.

"Good idea. Let's do that."

They spent another half an hour swimming lazily back and forth down the lanes, chatting about nothing in particular, and at other times drifting in comfortable silence. Danny was finally too exhausted to stay afloat, and they said goodnight, promising to meet again after a couple of days.

As he lay down in bed that night, Danny held his hand up in a stream of moonlight that bleached it pure white. He thought about the feeling of his hand in Sam's and how she didn't think his merman half was creepy at all. Smiling, he curled into his pillow and fell deeply asleep.


	17. Chapter 17

" _Going so soon? I wouldn't hear of it. Why my little party's just beginning."_

\- Wicked Witch of the West; L. Frank Baum

* * *

For the first time in a long time, probably since before high school started, Danny had a good week. There were no more monster attacks, he got to hang out with Sam at the pool one more time thanks to his parents always being gone, and he was staying on top of his homework. All in all, things were looking up.

So he completely forgot about Mr. Masters's party on the weekend, until he came home from school Friday afternoon to find brand new clothes lying on his bed, looking out of place in the otherwise messy bedroom. He stared, bewildered, at the ostentatious stack – black slacks, a light-silver dress shirt, a black waistcoat with silver trim, a black tie, some high-quality socks, absurdly shiny black shoes, and even a new pair of underwear.

There was a note on top. In curly black calligraphy, like it had been written with a fountain pen – and it probably had been – were two words:

_Little Badger_

Danny crushed the paper in his fist and threw it into the trash.

"Why do we have to wear suits at a beach party?" he grumbled to Tucker the next night. There was already sand in the stupid shoes Vlad had given him, and the grit rubbed uncomfortably through his socks. Wind whipped off of the ocean, blowing more sand onto his feet.

Tucker straightened his over-sized brown blazer, which he'd borrowed from his dad along with the rest of his baggy outfit. "Dude! When have we ever gone to a party where we had to wear ties?"

"I look ridiculous. You look even _more_ ridiculous."

"No way. This suit has been giving Foley men swagger since the seventies. My style is timeless."

They were loitering by the 'teenager-friendly' snack tables that marked the southern boundary of Mr. Masters's 'shindig'. The Fentonworks Beach had been, seemingly by magic, transformed into a haven for Amity Beach's rich and marginally famous. There were tiki torches, globular paper lanterns strung on ropes, three separate food stations, about a dozen waiters toting trays of champagne and piña coladas, a fully-stocked bar, a DJ playing music that had been popular ten years ago, and a huge bonfire pit. All of the big names in town were there – the Mansons, the Sanchezes and the Baxters, Mayor Montez, the dude who had until recently been the sole owner of Axion Labs, and even the weather channel's Lance Thunder. Plus about a hundred other people who wanted to rub elbows with Vlad Masters.

Mr. Masters was strutting through them all like a king, with his stupid fancy suit and stupid pony-tail, shaking hands and chortling and kissing babies or whatever.

"Also," said Tucker, grabbing yet another mushroom-cheese-and-chicken kebab from the table behind them, "all this free food! I know this is technically Mr. Masters's party, but dude, we killed a monster this week. Can't we just imagine that this is the universe's karma, thanking us for our good deed?"

Since they took care of the mud puppy Tuesday, both the janitor and the upperclassman girl had been released from the hospital. They were both continuing to recover at home, but they would make a full recovery. It felt good to know that no one had died because of that thing, because Danny and Tucker had stopped it in time. _Together_. Tucker stressed that that was the important part. They had done it as a _team_.

That said - "Tucker, how about we _not_ talk about that while surrounded by tons of people?"

"Just saying." Tucker shrugged, a satisfied grin on his face. "What's not to like about this?"

"Well, for one thing, everyone here thinks me and my family are nutjobs. Also, this place is like my backyard. Would _you_ want Dash Baxter hanging out in _your_ backyard?"

To be fair, Dash had been leaving him alone since that incident on the water, though the last few days he'd stopped flinching so much every time he and Danny made eye contact, which meant that the shield of guilt protecting Danny was starting to wear thin.

"Fenton!" a voice cried, right before a big hand slapped him genially on the back, nearly knocking him into the punch bowl.

"Oh," said Danny through gritted teeth, "hey, Kwan."

"Nice duds!" the tall Asian kid exclaimed, beaming. It was too dark to tell if he was teary-eyed. He got emotional around Danny a lot nowadays.

"Uh, thanks."

"Hey, Dash!" the kid called out, his attention span like that of a small dog surrounded by squirrels. He trotted off across the sand.

"That was relatively painless," said Tucker.

Danny rubbed his stinging shoulder blade. "Easy for you to say."

He watched Kwan run up to Dash and initiate a series of very bro-y greetings – a high-five on each hand, an exploding double fist bump, and finally a grunting chest bump. Then Dash caught a glance of Danny over Kwan's shoulder; predictably, he narrowed his baby-blue eyes at Danny, frowned a lot, and then just dropped it.

Once upon a time, Danny would have been the first one to look away; then he would have run away to hide on the other side of the party before Dash could decide to dunk him bodily into the punch bowl. He thought that now he should feel satisfied that he had something so bad on Dash that the jock was avoiding him, but to his surprise he didn't really feel anything. Looking at Dash, he thought about the octopus and the mud monster, and Skulker and Reever, and Birghid Empress of the Merfolk, and compared to them Dash just looked… small.

"Huh," he remarked.

"Wazza?" Tucker said around a mouthful of nacho.

Danny turned to explain, but then out of nowhere, Sam was at his side refilling her punch, and all thoughts of Dash dashed out of his head. She had never looked as pretty as now, in a short lilac dress and violet shrug, with dark black tights and black boots that almost definitely weren't filling up with sand. Danny froze, his heart fluttering in his chest. He swallowed once, tugged at his too-tight tie, and grabbed a chicken-cheese spear. "Kebab?"

Sam looked from him to the kebab scornfully, said, "I'm an ultra-recyclo-vegetarian, so _no_ ," and walked away.

He slapped himself in the face. He _knew_ that. She'd told him only a few days ago.

"I'll take that," said Tucker, and he plucked the food from Danny's hand. "You're going to have to let her go, Danny. This is turning into Valerie all over again."

"This isn't like Valerie," said Danny mournfully. "I think she could actually like me."

Tucker patted Danny's shoulder. "We all tell ourselves that, man."

"Besides," Danny added, "I don't like her that way! I just think we could be friends. She's a really cool person."

"Sure, sure…"

Across the beach, nearer the entrance to the lab, Maddie Fenton was swatting at her husband, who wouldn't stop scratching himself.

"How do people live like this?" grumbled Jack, squirming inside of his clothes, alternatively clawing at his arms and back and stomach and sides. "I'm breaking out in hives, Maddie! I need my neoprene."

"Jack, dear," his wife said stiffly, "It's just for one night." Maddie was wearing a turquoise evening dress she had last worn to their high school reunion, and while she appreciated the chance to dress up, she also admitted that she felt exposed without the weapons and tracking equipment built into her suit. All she had was her radar wrist-watch and what would fit into her handbag.

Even though she had been more than happy to let Vlad use their beach for his party, it made her uncomfortable to have so many people gathered in one place by the water, defenseless. Normally the buoys would have given them enough warning to evacuate. But the merperson that had breached their defenses had neither been caught nor passed the buoys again and for all they knew could be anywhere on the eastern coast of the U.S.

Two weeks they had been working to find it, and in two weeks had found nothing. Several times she and Jack had come close to giving up, to writing it off as an equipment malfunction. Every time they lost hope, however, Vlad would remind them of the Baby Buoy's photograph and rally their spirits. When Vlad hadn't been surveying their equipment and offering resources or suggestions to improve Fentonworks, or getting his affairs in order to move to Amity Beach and incorporate Axion into DALV Corp, he was relentlessly encouraging them with not only his unwavering spirit but also the darkness of his past, reminding Maddie and Jack what could happen if they gave up.

He really deserved this party. Maddie wished he hadn't had to pay for everything himself, but it couldn't be helped. The least she could do for him now was to relax and try to enjoy herself. The beach would be safe for one night.

"And you must be Jack and Maddie Fenton!" exclaimed a cheery voice belonging to a slim brunette woman in a pant-suit.

"That we are, Jack and Maddie Fenton!" said Jack, pulling Maddie against him with one arm and continuing to scratch his thigh with the other.

"So you are the owners of the infamous Fentonworks," the woman observed. Maddie didn't miss the spiral notepad in her hand or the bejeweled pen that was already taking notes. A reporter. So much for enjoying themselves.

"Yes-" Maddie replied hesitantly, but she was drowned out by Jack: "That's us! Fentonworks, merhunters extraordinaire! But don't get us wrong – we'll take out your sea serpents, too! If it lives in the ocean, we'll kill it for you. That's the Fenton guarantee!"

"I'll bet PETA loves you." The woman smirked and jotted something in her notepad.

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name," said Maddie, smiling falsely.

"Oh, silly me." The woman stretched out a hand, which Maddie took only reluctantly. "I'm Lupita Esteban with _Top Hot News Magazine_." Maddie was secretly satisfied when Jack nearly dislocated the reporter's shoulder with his overly-enthusiastic handshake. As Esteban straightened her jacket, wincing slightly, she continued, "I'm doing a story on Mr. Masters. Our readers are just dying to know about this billionaire recluse's personal life."

"I'm sure," drawled Maddie.

"Is it true that Mr. Masters is your sole monetary benefactor?"

"Er, yes…" Maddie said, while her husband blundered ahead.

"We wouldn't be where we are without Vladdy!" said Jack, grinning broadly across the beach, where Vlad could be seen in conversation with the Mayor. Maddie wished she could tell him that this reporter probably wasn't on their side without being too obvious about it.

"And how does it feel to know the only reason you stay in business with your, er, cryptozoology franchise is because of a highly successful friend's philanthropy?"

Jack's expression finally turned cloudy, and Maddie knew the reporter had made a misstep; Jack hated the word 'cryptozoology'.

"Hey," he said, frowning, "we're not cryptozoo-whatees. Those are those lunatics who think Bigfoot and ghosts and aliens are real. Let me tell you, Miss Estevez-"

"Esteban."

"-Esteban. Merfolk are real. There's nothing realer. Come on, Mads." Jack grabbed his wife's hand and pulled her away from the reporter, who nevertheless seemed to have a satisfactory amount to write about.

Jazz filled a paper plate with food over at the teenager tables. Danny noticed her and decided to commiserate with her in a bond of suffering. This wasn't her scene either; she'd probably much rather spend a Saturday night at the library or counseling that senior, Spike. And if commiserating was out of the question, he could at least rub in how 'not fun' this party was, since she was the one who had agreed they'd _both_ be there.

"So?" he said. "Having fun?"

"It's… a learning experience," she replied, like it was a struggle to find something positive to say.

"Er, how so?"

"I don't often get chances to observe people at these kinds of events. There are actually a lot of interesting factors affecting their behavior – their social status, the amount of alcohol they've imbibed-"

"Uh, yeah, never mind. I don't care that much."

"I wish we could imbibe some of those piña coladas," said Tucker, eyeing a waiter with a fresh tray.

"No, you don't," scolded Jazz. "Right now your brains are at a crucial point of their development. Imagine what kind of harm alcohol would do!"

"You," said Tucker, "are not one of us."

"One of who?"

"A teenager."

"I could have told you that," said Danny, smirking.

Jazz scowled and would have said more, but she spotted something over Danny's shoulder that made her eyes widen. "Incoming," she whispered, and darted off.

Danny turned around to see what had scared his sister away and found himself face-to-face with Mr. Masters.

"Ah, Daniel!" the man said, making a sweeping gesture of welcome before clasping his hands in front of him. Danny seriously hoped his classmates weren't watching. Alas, a quick glance told him – they were. There were a lot of unhinged jaws. Mr. Masters turned to Tucker. "And this must be your little friend."

'Little friend' really was not a phrase that applied to anyone older than three, but Tucker didn't seem to care. He thrust out his hand, which was not accepted. "Tucker, Tucker Foley, and let me tell you it is an honor to make your acquaintance, Mr. Masters, sir. I hear you just took over Axion Labs. Well, if you ever need a fresh opinion about technology, I'll have you know I've been studying Axion and DALV projects since I was-"

"Yes, yes," Mr. Masters said flippantly. "That's very nice." Wrapping an arm about Danny's shoulders, he led Danny away from the table and his best friend. "I hope, Daniel, that you are enjoying yourself."

Seeing as any other answer would have been socially unacceptable, Danny said, "Yeah, uh, it's fine."

"I do regret us not being able to spend more quality time together. I would think you've been avoiding me!" At this he chuckled, and Danny hesitantly did the same; he had been avoiding Mr. Masters with every effort. "I would, if I did not know how extraordinarily _busy_ you are. High school is a turbulent time in any young man's life."

Danny chose to not encourage a nostalgic story about Mr. Masters's high school days by saying nothing.

"Oh, and I see you're wearing the clothes I picked out for you. I'm relieved to see they fit so well, but really, I had no doubt they would."

"Yeah, thanks, but I actually already had something."

"That ratty old thing in your closet? No, I couldn't let you be caught in that. You're like a nephew to me, nay, a _son_. May I call you 'son'?"

"Sorry, that's what my dad calls me." Also, it would have been seriously creepy. It was already creepy enough that Mr. Masters knew the contents of his closet and could do things like disappear into an ocean fog bank without a trace.

"Yes. Your father." Mr. Masters frowned across the beach. Danny followed his gaze to where his dad was making friends with the chocolate fountain. "A stroke of luck, really, that both you and your sister took after your mother, isn't it?"

"I guess?" Sure, Danny was happy he wasn't a giant, but his dad had plenty of good qualities, too. "Um, did you need something, Mr. Masters?"

"Have you ever thought about power, Daniel?"

That was an out-of-the-blue question. Danny gulped. "Do you mean like being president power, or solar panels and wind farms power?"

"Like being able to make the people around you do whatever you want them to. The power to see something you want – and take it." At this point, Mr. Master's eyes had drifted unmistakably to the irritated redhead in the turquoise dress standing next to Danny's dad.

A shiver suspiciously like his 'fishy sense' crawled up Danny's spine. He pulled out of the billionaire's grasp and stepped away. "Sorry, Mr. Masters. I don't really know what you're getting at, but my dream is to be an astronaut. I'm not interested in that kind of power."

Mr. Masters smiled thinly. "You are young, Daniel. You hardly know what you want. Well," he said, shrugging, and the cold atmosphere around them broke. "I've prepared a special demonstration for this evening. I must attend to it, so don't be wandering off just yet; I'm sure you wouldn't want to miss it. Toodle loo."

Danny stared at the billionaire's retreating ponytail until Tucker caught up to him. "Tucker," he said, not taking his eyes off of Mr. Masters until he disappeared around one end of the DJ's station, "I really don't like that guy."

"He didn't even shake my hand," said Tucker, crossing his arms and pouting.

"I'm serious, Tuck. He gives me the creeps."

"Rich people are weird, dude. That's a given."

Danny sighed. He gave up. "Never mind. Let's just finish this party, and we can play Doomed or something."

"Good plan. Now, by 'finish this party', I hope you mean we can take a moment to visit the babes around the bonfire pit, because that is our next stop."

Laughing, Danny let Tucker drag him over to where a bunch of cheerleaders were trying to toast marshmallows and squealing every time their marshmallows caught on fire. Tucker proceeded to try to teach them by example how to toast a perfect, s'more-worthy marshmallow. The thanks he received were a few eye rolls and the retreat of the cheerleader team.

Danny speared himself a marshmallow and started toasting it. "They're missing out," he told his friend.

Indignantly Tucker replied: "To quote your dad – darn tootin' they are!"

As they built their first s'mores, smooshing marshmallow and semi-melted chocolate between two graham cracker cookies, the shivers came back to Danny with a vengeance. He dropped his s'more in the sand, and was deaf to Tucker's cries of protest. Danny turned toward the ocean, and what he saw and felt there baffled him.

The ocean was calm that night, hardly any waves. The night sky was clear overhead and a gibbous moon reflected its silver light on the otherwise black surface. Yet out from the shore it was like the water had leaped several feet into the air, hiding the horizon. There was a single wave, a wall of silent black water about the length of the Fentonworks Beach, and it was gradually getting closer, growing taller as it did.

"Tuck," Danny whispered. The techno-geek was still trying to salvage Danny's s'more. "Tuck," he said more loudly, and then he grabbed Tucker's arm and started pulling. "Run."

It took about two seconds for Tucker to see what Danny had, and the boy dropped his s'more, too.

As they turned and scrambled over the loose sand of the beach, only a few people had noticed anything wrong, but those who had were screaming, and the cry was quickly taken up. Party-goers were running in every direction, but most ran for the narrow and rickety wooden staircase and the passcode-operated lab door that wouldn't open for any of them.

Danny and Tucker were only halfway to the cliff when the wave hit the shore, and a second later it slammed into their backs and submerged the Fentonworks Beach under two meters of ocean water.

Danny was lifted off of his feet and Tucker pulled out of his grasp. At once, his body started trying to change, his feet elongating in the confines of his shoes and his legs feeling less like legs and more like a tail that had been torn in half. He twisted in the rush of water, people, food, and party decorations swirling around him, desperate to get his shoes off. He managed to kick one off and pull off the other with his hands, after which his clawed fingers shredded through his clothing to get it off of his legs.

His tail formed just as the water stilled and changed directions, sucking everything after it.

* * *

Sam coughed, choking up the stinging saltwater from her lungs. She wiped a hand across her face, brushing off sand and a strand of seaweed. Then, groaning, she sat up and looked around.

It was like a bomb had been dropped on Vlad Masters's welcome party. Everywhere Sam looked, tables, food, driftwood, decorations, seaweed, and people were strewn across the beach, hanging from the wooden staircase that climbed the cliff, or bobbing in the waves just off shore. People were moaning, some were crying, and others (Paulina) were just fuming about a ruined shoe. At first glance, it didn't look like anyone was too terribly injured, but it was quite dark with all of the torches, lanterns, and the bonfire extinguished. It was also hard to say how many people had been swept off of the beach. If someone had been knocked unconscious, there was every chance they would drown.

Sam was only about twenty feet away from where she had been before, but where there had been five tiki torches and a banner there were now one busted speaker from the DJ's system and the overturned chocolate fountain. She quickly spotted her mother and father together at the base of the staircase, looking about as pleased as cats after a dunking.

She also saw one glowing merboy hunkered behind an overturned table.

Sam stumbled over to him, water squelching inside of her boots, and dropped down at his side. "Triton!" she hissed. "What are you doing here?"

He blinked at her, his chest heaving. The merboy was not looking his best. He was splattered with wet sand and bleeding from several scratches on his tailfin. For some reason, he was wearing a dress shirt and waistcoat, and Sam wondered briefly if his part-time job had anything to do with catering. How else would he have gotten here?

"More importantly, why did you transform? It's not safe for you here!" Sam saw a white bundle of plastic nearby, one of the disposable tablecloths, so she grabbed it and draped one end quickly over his head and shoulders, hoping to disguise his glow. The rest she used to cover his tail.

Triton shook his head, seeming to come to his senses. **I didn't mean to,** he said, his words echoing in Sam's head. **When I touch water…** Sam caught his meaning, and her eyes widened. She knew Triton could be a merperson in water and a human on land. It made sense that he would change to match the element.

"Can you change back?" she whispered. "You can't stay like this!"

Triton winced but nodded nevertheless. **I can try, but it won't be perfect.** Sam waited, watching on anxiously, and she soon realized that the shape under the plastic had taken on the outlines of knees and toes. His hands that clutched the edges of the tablecloth seemed to shrink, losing their claws and webbing until they were simple, pink, and human. There was no change in his face, however. To account for this, he pulled the plastic hood further over his head.

Sam wondered if he only held back to conceal his human face from her. Despite having met several times now and calling each other 'friends', Triton still insisted on strict secrecy about that aspect of himself. It meant he didn't trust her, but she could hardly blame him. He had mentioned he had enough enemies; it would have been hard to trust anyone.

Triton knelt behind the table and peered over the top. **Is everyone okay?**

Sam joined him. "I think so, but I don't know. What happened? That didn't seem normal."

The merboy shook his head, crinkling the plastic. **That's because it wasn't. I don't know if you noticed, but that wave only hit the Fentonworks Beach. It was targeting us.**

Just then, thunderous and malicious disembodied laughter rolled over the beach. Sam and Triton both pressed their hands to their ears, as did most of the people around them, but it did no good. The laughter was beating inside their heads, bypassing their ears altogether.

In the ocean near the beach, the water began to glow and boil. It built, roiling, into a standing column of water twenty feet tall. It glowed bright white and at its center an unnerving shade of red-violet. Once formed, the burbling column drifted towards the sand as the glow intensified ominously near the top.

Sam felt Triton tugging her damp sleeve. She looked at him, and he pointed to the sand at the shore, where five or six dark squat _things_ were crawling onto the beach. On land, they tottered to their feet, and to Sam they looked like three-foot-tall golems made of seaweed.

The glow on the column of water reached its peak, emerging and revealing itself as a figure – a head, torso, and at last its entire body until it was lounging on the top of the column as comfortably as a monarch on his throne.

He was another merperson, but this one was nothing at all like the boy sitting next to Sam, whose kind, open face and unassuming form had never once inspired fear in her. On his perch, Sam could see the newcomer from head to tailfin. His coloring was much more flamboyant than Triton's. Like Triton, his torso and arms were white primarily, but they were striped with wedges and streaks of orange, red, and red-violet. At the waist, the tailfin started as burnt orange, darkening until violet at the flaring tailfin, struck by bands of pure black. Even more flamboyant were his accoutrements. Like a king, he had tied a crimson cape about his shoulders and wore a horned metal helm from under which curled long black hair. Two bright red eyes stared hungrily at the beach over a fanged grin.

Some things that Triton had said started coming back to Sam all at once:

_Why aren't you scared of me?_

_Merpeople are dangerous._

_They could kill you without even touching you._

Then she remembered the mutant he claimed to have fought, which at the time had seemed so preposterous, and she wondered if any of these golems were also man-eating.

Sam realized she was shaking, and she couldn't stop.

The sodden crowd on the beach stared in horrified silence at the merman and his creatures. Then Jack Fenton's booming voice called out:

"See?! I told you they were real! Take that, Esteban! Who's a crytozoologist now?"

Triton slapped a hand over his face, and the party-goers started screaming again.

_**Silence**_ **, you fools!** The voice entered her head with such force it made Sam's teeth ache. **Look at you all** , the merman sneered **, trapped here, crying 'Help us!'… Pathetic. If not for the shoreline separating your kind and mine, you humans would have been subjugated a long time ago. Oh, don't leave early!** The merman raised a hand, and a rope of water shot from the water nearby, over the heads of the people on the beach, and wrapped around the waist of Lance Thunder, who had been trying to sneak away up the stairs. It lifted him into the air and flung him back onto the sand.

**You'll miss all the fun.**

Water surged into the rope, and it bulged until it was several feet around. The merman swung his hand left; the water followed. And when he swung his hand right, the water he controlled smashed through the upper landings of the staircase, splintering the wood and dislodging the whole structure from the rock. As the water withdrew into the surf, the staircase began to collapse. The people still on it and below it screamed and scrambled to get out of the way.

"You monster!" a voice cried. "If you think we'll stand by and let you hurt these people, you've got another thing coming!" Maddie Fenton strode over the debris toward the merman, drawing what looked like a grappling hook gun out of her handbag, while her husband hurried to join her from a ways up the beach.

**Maddie Fenton.** The creature grinned gleefully. With another wave of his hand, a thick tentacle of water sprang from the surf and wrapped around Maddie, pinning her arms to her sides. She was lifted off of the beach and brought toward the merman, where she hung struggling in the air. **My dear, are you impressed?**

"Let go of me!"

"Unhand my wife, you ugly fish reject!"

Next to Sam, Triton started saying, "No, no, no," and it sounded very strange to her until she realized he was using his real voice. All of a sudden he rose to his feet and ran around the table.

"Triton?" Sam climbed to her feet, too. She meant to run after him, tell him to stop. But her legs were quivering uncontrollably and wouldn't move.

* * *

Danny had no idea what he was going to do. What he did know was that his mom was being held hostage by a very unfriendly merman, and he couldn't stand by and let it happen.

He clambered over the wreckage of the beach, focusing on the water nearby until he could feel his heartbeat syncing up to the tide; the smell of salt and seaweed was sharp in his nostrils. Soon the column of water was directly in front of him, towering with its occupant high above his head. Several yards to his left, his dad was chucking rocks, bottles, and metal platters at the merman, none of which were landing. The seaweed-muck things the merman had either recruited or was controlling like puppets watched Danny's approach with droopy glassy eyes, but so far made no move to stop him.

**Let her go!** he thought as loudly as he could.

**And what do we have here?** the merman said, peering down at him. **A little land-locked merboy.**

Danny flung the fold of tablecloth off of his head, ignoring gasps he heard from people nearby, no longer caring if they saw him or not. He glared up at the intruder and bared his fangs. **Who are you? Why are you doing this?** According to Kaima, the merfolk lived by a code of secrecy. They wouldn't expose themselves like this – it put their entire people at risk.

**I am Plasmius,** the merman announced, and by the way he spread his arms in dramatic gesture, Danny assumed the whole beach could hear him. **And I am King of the Merfolk.**

Danny flinched. This guy was either lying, or something really bad had gone down under the sea the past couple of weeks.

**As for why I am doing this? Isn't it obvious?** The red eyes narrowed a fraction, and the grin on his face hardened. **Power, boy. Power.**

Right then, a huge chunk of wood, a plank from the wrecked Fenton Dock, hit the column of water just a few inches below Plasmius. The merman's nostrils flared, and he glanced at the seaweed creatures, which at once began sliming their way towards Danny's dad. Danny wondered if Plasmius had given them a command that only they could hear.

Also, something about the way this guy said 'power' struck Danny as way too familiar.

**The ocean is just** _**full** _ **of untapped potential. The only problem is that most of it can never leave the confines of the sea. Until now. My empire under the waves is immense, larger than you have the ability to comprehend, and I now have the means to expand it further. What I'm doing here tonight, you may take as a formal declaration of war.**

Danny cupped his palm and began drawing water into it. A huge globe began to form, two feet across. **You talk way too much. How about you just let her go, and we'll call it a draw?**

**You wish to fight me?**

Danny's answer was to pull back his arm and fling the water. It flew towards Plasmius's smug face, speeded along by Danny's will, and exploded against its target dead on, doing… absolutely nothing.

**Oh look,** Plasmius sneered, **you splashed me. How cute. Now let** _ **me**_ **show you how to use your hydrokinesis, boy.**

Plasmius didn't even lift a finger this time. A second tentacle of water shot out of the sea, as massive as the one that had grabbed his mom. It squeezed Danny around his waist and lifted him into the air. The beach dropped away below him, and for a moment he could see the wide-eyed faces staring at him from the crowd. He dipped sickeningly as the tentacle suddenly drew closer to the ground, and then it flung him.

At first, Danny couldn't comprehend what was happening. He wasn't on the beach anymore; Plasmius, his parents, the cliff, all of it was dropping away into the distance. The air pressed around him, sucking away his breath and whipping the folds of the tablecloth wrapped around his body.

He hit the waves and bounced, one, two, three, four times, and tumbled into the water, spinning head over tailfin. Dazed, he sank upside-down towards the sea floor, vaguely aware of having a tail again, the tablecloth floating away, his gills filtering fresh water for the first time in a long time. He stared ahead into the murky, moonlit water, and watched a blurry red-violet shape swim toward him. It passed him within twenty feet, and at that moment Danny saw the person held under Plasmius's clawed grasp – his mother.

Plasmius still had his mother.

Danny recoiled, tumbled upright, and shot after them.


	18. Chapter 18

" _Nobody's going to cook me and eat me, I hope."_

" _People don't quite understand," Michael said, and he may have been serious, "to be eaten pays a compliment to your power."_

\- Denis Johnson

* * *

Tucker thought he was going to be sick. Danny hadn't stood a chance. One minute he'd been having the most deadly stare-off in the world, the next, he was being skipped like a stone across the ocean by the helmet-wearing psychopath.

"Oh my god!" gasped Jazz, holding her hands over her mouth. "How did he… How is this happening?"

She and Tucker were crouching side by side behind the DJ's seaweed-clogged turntables, watching the chaos on the beach unfold. Tucker didn't know how he had gotten dragged so far away from Danny when the wave hit. He had completely lost sight of him, until the moment his friend had stupidly marched right up to the big bad guy and apparently challenged him to a fight. Tucker understood why Danny had done it – the creep had Mrs. F. But maybe if Tucker had been there, he might have told Danny how hopeless it was.

Now Danny was…

The evil merman, Plasmius, had watched Danny's flight with a self-satisfied smirk. The moment Danny sunk, Plasmius drew Mrs. Fenton close, grabbed her with one arm, and used his big tower of water like a rocket cannon to blast out to sea, leaving the beach in semi-darkness.

To Tucker, it didn't look like Plasmius was running away. More like he was pursuing. _Oh no… Danny!_

"Mom!" Jazz cried, jumping to her feet and reaching out a grasping hand. "No!"

"Maddie!" shouted Mr. Fenton. He stomped into the waves like he planned to swim after them; seaweed goons, who had been trying to fight him, hung from his arms ineffectively. He smashed them into the ground, one after the other, and then brought his foot down on them in turn. A trail of the dismembered monsters littered the beach behind him. Having disposed of them, Mr. Fenton turned back to the sea: "Maddie!"

Tucker followed Jazz as she ran up to her dad, once the last of the seaweed things was destroyed. "Dad!" gasped Jazz. Her eyes were as wide as dinner plates. "He has Mom!"

"Not for long," rumbled Jack Fenton, and Tucker knew he had never seen Mr. F looking so serious before. He looked like he could punch a tree in half. "Not if I have anything to say about it, and you can bet I have a whole heck of a lot to say about it."

Mr. Fenton surveyed the beach, looking for anything he could use to chase after them. Now that the merman was gone and his seaweed creatures pulverized, basically everyone had looked at each other and decided to book it to the south, leaving the Fenton Beach a deserted party wasteland.

Off to the right, near what was left of the Fenton Dock, the Boat lay turned on its side on the sand. Mr. Fenton stomped over to it, grabbed it with both hands and failed to flip it over. He heaved again, bending his knees, and the Boat lifted about a foot off of the ground. Then Mr. Fenton dropped it again. Then he kicked it.

"Plan B," he said and jogged to the entrance to the lab.

Jazz glanced between her dad and the sea, where nothing could be seen of Plasmius or Danny, not even a faint glow. Tears were streaming over her face, and her red hair was a disheveled mess. She didn't even notice the soggy tortilla chip that had been clinging to her shoulder this whole time.

Suddenly, she whirled on Tucker and grabbed his shoulders, her fingers digging sharply into his skin. "Tucker, _where's Danny?_ "

Tucker gulped. "Uh…" Jazz spun, ran back to the surf, and waded out into the water until she was up to her waist. Her eyes darted left and right and she craned her head to look over the debris still floating in the moon-tipped waves. Tucker hurried after her. "Wait… what are you doing?"

"Tucker," Jazz said, grabbing his wrist and squeezing so hard it hurt. She looked frantically into his face, eyes practically bulging out of her head. "Danny can't swim."

Saying that, she released Tucker from her vice-like grip and started grabbing every dark thing that bobbed in the water, anything that vaguely resembled her brother's head. Tucker's mouth went dry. He had to clear his throat a few times, and then almost shout Jazz's name to get her attention.

"Jazz!"

" _What_?"

"Danny's not here!"

"Don't say that! Help me look for him!"

"No!" said Tucker, before stammering, "I mean - he wasn't here. When the wave hit. He, uh, went inside to use the bathroom, like two minutes earlier. So he's not here! He's okay, Jazz. He's okay!"

_He has to be okay._

Fresh tears ran over Jazz's cheeks, glinting silver in the moonlight. "Oh, thank god…" At that point, all of the fight left her body, and she let Tucker lead her out of the water and back to the sand.

"Let's just… sit down and… there's nothing else we can do right now, okay?"

Mutely, Jazz nodded, and they sat down side by side on the beach.

When Mr. Fenton emerged from the lab, he was wearing his dayglo orange Fenton Wetsuit, breathing apparatus and everything, and carrying what looked like a bazooka in one hand and a fishing pole in the other. Now, the bazooka Tucker understood immediately. It made things go 'boom'. Why Mr. F thought he'd be able to catch an evil, super-powerful merman with an everyday fishing rod, though, was beyond him. But hey, Jack Fenton was the merhunter here, not Tucker.

On the way to the water, Mr. Fenton hooked the fishing pole on his belt and hefted a metal rowboat by its prow from where it had washed up on the beach. He dragged it over one shoulder to the water, also collecting the two necessary oars from out of the debris.

"Don't worry, Jazzypants," he said, flipping the rowboat over and shoving into the waves. "I'll bring your mother back." With that, he walked into the water, threw his weapons into the boat, hopped inside it and began rowing out to sea.

Watching this, Tucker seriously hoped Danny was okay. He got the feeling Mr. Fenton probably wasn't going to find his wife in a tiny rowboat on the ocean, even if the boat _did_ have the name "Fenton" on it.

* * *

"Seriously, I'll be fine, just go on without me already." Sam frowned at her parents, crossing her arms and digging her feet stubbornly into the sand. The wreckage of the staircase lay scattered about them, while the cliff loomed darkly overhead.

"Sammy, this isn't like you!" her father protested. His blonde hair, usually gelled and permed into a dome on his head, was flattened and sticking out at odds angles. It was hard to take him seriously when he looked like that; then again, it was hard to take him seriously when he looked his best, too.

"What isn't? Caring about other people? Mrs. Fenton just got abducted by a merman and we're supposed to run away?"

"Yes!" exclaimed her mother, who was looking equally tragic with only one earring and her mascara running over her cheeks like black tears. "That is what sensible people do when a monster attacks!"

"Look," said Sam, thrusting an arm toward the empty beach. "He's gone. It's safe now. I just want to make sure everyone's okay. Is that so much to ask?"

Her parents looked at each other skeptically and then turned back to Sam. " _What_ has gotten into you today?" her mother asked. "You haven't been this, this-"

"Uncouth," her father supplied.

"Uncouth," her mother agreed, "since you insisted on dying your hair that awful shade of black."

"One, it's not awful," Sam retorted, glowering. "And two, I know how to take care of myself. I never ask you two for anything. Can't you let me do this?"

Her parents both pursed their lips in mirrored expressions of discontentment.

"I'll call Charles on a payphone and have him pick me up when I'm done. I won't even go near the water. I promise, I'll be _fine_."

Her mother rolled her eyes. "Very well."

"Pamela!" her father protested.

"What?" said her mother. "Let her tire herself out waiting here for nothing. She'll learn her lesson."

Sam didn't want to know what kind of lesson her mother assumed she would be learning. That answer was permission, so she wasn't going to argue.

" _Thank_ you," she said.

"Come, Jeremy," her mother said, already walking down the beach and beckoning to her husband.

"You be safe, Sammy," said her father, looking her sternly in the eyes, before he followed his wife.

Sam let out a sigh at their retreating backs. Turning back to the ocean, she watched as Jack Fenton started rowing out on the water in a tiny boat, while the small figures of Jazz Fenton and Tucker Foley sat together on the shore. Strangely enough, Danny Fenton was nowhere in sight. He had definitely been at the party, though. Sam wondered if he had run away with the others, even while his mother was in mortal peril.

To be honest, at this point Sam couldn't care less about him. And while she felt sorry for Maddie Fenton, she wasn't the person Sam was sticking around for.

Sam climbed on top of one of the intact landings from the staircase so that she had a better view of the ocean. She peered into the dark waters, searching for a silver glow.

"Triton," she murmured. "Where are you?"

* * *

Plasmius stayed always just ahead of Danny. No matter how hard Danny swam, thrashing his tail and moving so fast he had to squint against the onrushing water, the merman was able to match his pace exactly.

Danny couldn't take it anymore. **Come back here!** he shouted, throwing his words furiously toward Plasmius.

Plasmius halted so abruptly that Danny shot right past him. Realizing this, Danny slammed his tailfin down, spread his pelvic fins wide, and pushed his webbed hands against the water, feeling like he was going to snap in half. Finally he managed to stop.

**Bra** _ **vo**_.

The word stabbed into his head, carrying with it a sensation of derision. Gulping water, trembling from the chase, Danny turned and swam slowly back to meet the merman. Plasmius was floating upright in the water, clapping sardonically as his tailfin lazily kept his altitude, the cape billowing about him in the ocean currents. Danny's mom was about ten feet to the left of him, encased in a bubble of air.

He was relieved that the merman had not allowed her to drown. She was awake and unharmed, but she did not look happy, if the way she was beating her fists against the wall of her prison and shouting was anything to go by. Her punches did little more than make the water barrier tremble. And while her words were too muffled for Danny to understand, he could bet they weren't anything she'd approve of him hearing.

As inappropriate a time as it was to be thinking about video games, looking across the water at Plasmius, Danny suddenly found himself reminded of Doomed.

In Doomed, the world map's tendency was to lead the players gradually into higher and higher levels of monsters. Normally it'd be level five Bionic Boars here, then level eight Cudgel-wielding Capers in the hills in the next region over. So when you get to be level twelve and you can take out a group of boars with a single area-of-effect attack, you start to feel pretty kick-butt.

Then you start exploring and accidentally wander into the radioactive waste dump on the other side of the forest, and a Scrap Dragon with a level so high that all you can see is three big question marks above its head rises out of the garbage heap. By the time you realize you're screwed and turn to run, it's too late, and the dragon kills you with a single hit that's not even a real attack, like it brushes you with the tip of its wing and you fall over dead.

Danny got the feeling that the octopus he'd fought could be the boar in that scenario, while Plasmius was the triple-question-mark scrap dragon of doom. And Danny was… well, all he knew was that in real life, people didn't rez in graveyards. He needed to be careful here.

The other merman seemed to be examining Danny, too, glancing at him from head to tail. As if satisfied with what he found, he said, **Truly, well done.**

Danny had been expecting Plasmius to attack him again at any second, but if the creep wanted to have a conversation, at least it would give Danny chance to catch his breath. So Danny said, **Er, thanks?**

**I'll admit,** Plasmius went on, leering at Danny through the murk, **when I first learned of your existence,** **I wasn't expecting much.** **I was intrigued, to be sure, but only as a curiosity. I certainly was not expecting you to go and pass my tests with flying colors.**

**Your… tests?** said Danny. His eyes flicked to his mother. She didn't seem to be aware of what they were saying, but he had trouble distinguishing when mindspeak was on a private channel, so to speak.

**Yes, boy, or who did you** _**think** _ **sent those creatures after you? Did you suppose it was a coincidence that the octopus attacked** _**you** _ **when the beach was otherwise deserted, or that the mud creature was targeting** _**your** _ **high school?**

Plasmius's words seemed to dribble out of Danny's head coldly down his spine, where they settled sickly in his stomach. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, out of his shock, and he finally remembered how to respond: **You know who I am?**

**Oh please, it wasn't that difficult. You were not especially subtle, were you?** Plasmius extended his right hand, palm up. **A young merboy gets his photo taken by the Fentons' buoys and then disappears miraculously. A few days later,** he continued, raising his left hand, **Daniel Fenton begins to test strange new powers at the dinner table, right under his family's noses.**

Plasmius brought his hands together and clasped them. **Like I said, it was not difficult.**

Danny swallowed heavily. The other merman now had him at a serious disadvantage – or what would have been a serious disadvantage, if what Plasmius said had not confirmed Danny's own suspicions.

Trembling, he nevertheless smirked and said, **You're one to talk about subtlety…** _ **Vlad**_ **.**

And somehow, realizing that he knew this merperson, had known him since he was learning to crawl and could put a real name on him, made him seem suddenly a lot less frightening.

If Vlad was surprised, he didn't show it. **So… at last you figured it out.**

**It wasn't that difficult** , Danny quipped, repeating Vlad's words. **You're the only one self-absorbed and creepy enough to pull this off. And what's with that helmet? Did you steal that from Loki, or buy it at the Halloween Hut?**

Vlad's eye twitched. **Now, Daniel, don't be rude.**

Danny had also discovered that he felt a whole lot less terrified when he was talking, so he kept going: **But I don't get it. Why are you doing all of this? Why did you destroy your own welcome party? Why are you telling people you're the King of the Merfolk? And why did you** _ **kidnap**_ ** _my mom_?**

Vlad's red eyes drifted to Danny's mother, and for an instant they softened, but in a way that was too possessive to make Danny feel any better. He looked back to Danny and said, **I am doing nothing more than putting my destiny in motion.**

**What destiny?** said Danny. **Do you think if you tell everyone you're a king it will suddenly make it true? Last I checked, Birghid –**

Vlad's colors flared bloodily, his eyes burning like hot coals. **That woman deserves to be filleted and left to rot at the bottom of the ocean's deepest trenches.**

The force of Vlad's words made Danny's head throb. **Wow,** he said, rubbing his temples. **Grudge much?**

**Between me and that witch,** snarled Vlad, **I am the only one who is fit to lead the Merfolk.**

Danny did not have any fond feelings for Kaima's mom, to be sure, but he would choose her over Vlad Masters any day. Something occurred to him then, and he narrowed his eyes at Vlad. **You're not the Merfolk King… You're the Siren King, aren't you?**

Vlad turned his nose up in distaste. **It amazes me how brazenly you speak about a war you know so little about.** He didn't say 'no'. So Danny was going to go ahead and interpret that as a 'yes'.

**Then stop dodging my questions and explain! First of all, how did you even get like this?** said Danny, gesturing to Vlad's body. Underlying his question was another, more desperate one. _How did_ I _get like this?_

Vlad appraised him and at last relented. **Very well. We have time, and it wouldn't hurt for you to know. I will tell you the story, the** _ **true**_ **events of my abduction twenty years ago:**

**As I'm sure you know, in university your parents and I were invited to join our professor and her team to observe a pod of humpback whales. When we were attacked, it was by two renegade merpersons, a male and female, who used their hydrokinesis in a way similar to how I used mine tonight, sweeping people overboard and then immobilizing them.** _ **Jack**_ **,** Vlad sneered, **protected only Maddie and our pretty, ditzy professor. By the time he remembered me, it was too late.**

**The merpersons took us to a cave, an inconspicuous outcropping of rock that teased us with a glimpse of sunlight but was inescapable, lest one wanted to drown. Two people tried and proved it. Then again, it may have been the preferable death to what awaited the rest of us.**

**They kept us there for weeks, keeping us alive on a diet of raw fish and then devouring us one by one. The female, well, she took a liking to me, so I did my best to talk myself into her favor, and from her I learned much.**

**I learned of the renegades' hatred for humankind that drove them to attack ships and eat the people onboard. I also learned of their belief that consuming the essence of a merperson, the soul and source of a merperson's power that can be extracted from a merperson's still-beating heart, would allow one to steal the power and abilities of the merperson consumed. I learned that their group had once been much larger, shrinking as the members turned on one another, jealous for more power.**

**Power which seemed to be driving them mad.**

**I knew then it was only a matter of time before one of this pair betrayed the other. I could only hope I bet my money on the right horse, as it were.**

**And so I did. I was the last of the survivors when it happened, and at the rate they had eaten my crewmates, I had but a handful of days left. The female ambushed the male and cut out his heart. What I did not count on was how mad she had become. Rather than eat the heart herself, she decided to feed it to me, 'just to see what happens'. I could not refuse.**

Danny could guess the end of the story, and he did not like where it was going. He was glad he hadn't eaten much at the party, because he was getting the urge to puke.

**As the hours passed, I noticed the changes in my body in the dampness of the cave. I was horrified, yes, but I also finally had a means of escape. I had seen the powers they wielded, and I had the element of surprise, for the mermaid thought I was her friend. As soon as I had some rudimentary control of my abilities, I struck her down and fled.**

**In time, I managed to find my way back to civilization, only to discover that while I was being held captive by cannibals, my best friend had asked the woman I loved to marry him. Not even a month was I gone, and in my memory they had decided to marry.** Vlad's face contorted in rage. **For such a betrayal… I have never forgiven him.**

**After that, I was utterly alone, but** _**stronger** _ **than anyone. I used my unique advantages to build my financial empire on land, and then rallied the renegades under the sea, those the Empress calls "sirens", who accepted me as their leader. Now, after twenty years, my goals are almost complete.**

Danny, shuddering, looked back at his mother, who was watching them with cautious eyes, one hand in the purse she had managed to keep with her this whole time. **So that's why you took her,** said Danny. **You want to make her the same as you.**

**Eventually, yes,** Vlad replied. **But that night is not tonight. I'm afraid she still has work to do in Amity Beach. Tonight, my dear Maddie was merely bait.**

**Bait?**

**To lure you here, my boy.** He shrugged. **Well, among other things, but that is none of your concern. I wanted a chance to talk to you, away from distractions. You have been avoiding me, after all.**

Danny narrowed his eyes. **What do you want with me?**

**I want you to join me, Daniel.**

For a moment, Danny was too dumbfounded to speak. **Jo-… Join you? What makes you think I would** _ **want**_ **to?**

Vlad smiled at him, eyes crinkling in sympathy. **Daniel, you may think we have nothing in common, but I am the only one in this world who understands what you have been going through. I know the pain of your transformation, the horror you felt the first time you suffocated on dry land, your fear of anyone seeing your true self. I know how the ocean calls to you constantly, pulling at the essence in your heart, making it ache and yearn for the freedom of the water.**

Danny's throat felt tight, and he was ashamed to see his skin glowing more brightly. Despite everything, Vlad had just described his feelings of the past few weeks exactly.

Seeing that his words were having an effect, Vlad continued. **I can teach you how to use your powers in ways you've never dreamed of. I can teach you how to live a life without fear. And when my work is done, and your father is out of the way and your mother at my side, you will never want for anything again.**

And like that, the spell was broken. **What do you mean about my dad being 'out of the way'?**

**Sorry, that was a euphemism. I mean 'dead', of course.**

* * *

Jack stared at his portable radar sitting on the bench in front of him as he rowed. The little green dot that indicated Maddie's location was not moving, and Jack was only going to think about that in a positive way, unable to contemplate anything else.

"I'm coming for you, Maddie," he told the watch with grim determination. "Hang in there."

* * *

Danny blinked a few times. Then he said, **Has anyone ever told you, you are one** _ **seriously**_ **crazed-up fruitloop?** His skin burned brightly again, but for an entirely different emotion than before. Baring his teeth, the fins at his hips fluttering in anger, he said, **You tell me you want to force my mom to be with you against her will and that you want to murder my dad, and then you expect me to want to** _ **join**_ **you? Why would I** _ **ever**_ **do that?**

Vlad shrugged, expression bland. **I admit, I did expect there to be some resistance, though I had** _ **hoped**_ **you would join me willingly. Very well.**

Suddenly, water rushed at Danny from all sides, and he felt like he was being squeezed in a giant fist. Though he struggled, though he pushed back against the water with his mind, he couldn't break free, could hardly move an inch.

Vlad raised his right arm and bared his wrist. From the white flesh there, a terribly familiar black barb slid into the water, bringing with it a stream of black poison. **A few weeks with the sirens may change your thinking. It certainly changed mine.**

Danny began to struggle with increased frenzy, slamming his will against the water holding him, to no avail. The poison swam through the water toward him like it had a mind of its own. Danny sucked in as much water as he dared to buy himself more oxygen and then, remembering his nights in the pool, clamped his gills shut and tightened the muscles in his throat. The venom slithered into his nostrils and began to pool bitterly on the back of his tongue.

Danny squeezed his eyes shut, focusing on resisting, no matter how useless it was. His heart pounded, already crying for oxygen.

Just then, the water around Vlad seemed to explode.

Danny opened his eyes and saw what his senses had felt – Vlad's entire body was writhing with blue bolts of electricity. Danny caught a glimpse of a tiny metal prong lodged in Vlad's chest and his mom aiming a small silver-and-green gun at him. He didn't recognize the weapon, but it almost certainly had the name "Fenton" on it.

The pressure around Danny vanished at the same time that the wall around Maddie collapsed and the bubble of air escaped to the surface. Danny at once spit the poison out of his mouth, but he made the mistake of breathing too soon. The cloud of venom in the water around him and the residue in his throat were enough to sear his gills with icy-hot pain.

He tried to ignore it. He had to save his mom.

Danny shot toward her. When the air bubble was destroyed, the water must have crashed against her with enough force to knock her out. Her body hung limp, her handbag and gun already sinking below her. Danny scooped one arm under her and swam as quickly as he could to the surface, thankful that Vlad hadn't brought them too deep to begin with.

They broke through the waves. Danny cradled his mom in his arms, careful to keep her head above the water. She wasn't breathing. He could feel the water in her lungs, drowning her.

Danny's head swam as the poison began to take effect. His vision was already starting to blur at the edges. Angrily, he shook his head. _Focus. You can do this. You_ have _to do this._

He thought about how he had been drowning. He must have looked just like this when Kaima found him. _Can humans not breathe in the water?_ she had asked, like it was the strangest thing she'd ever heard. _You were completely full of water. You didn't get better until I took it out._

Danny's eyes widened. Continuing to hold his mom in one arm, keeping them above the surface with frantic swipes of his tail, he held up his right hand over her face and focused on the water flooding her lungs. Carefully, he drew it out in a thin stream through her slack lips. In the middle of this, she started to cough, spitting up the remaining water on her own.

Her eyes fluttered but then closed again. Her chest was gently rising and falling. She was going to be okay.

A wave of lightheadedness swept over Danny, and he felt like the entire ocean had just tilted by several degrees. It was too early to lose consciousness, though. He had to stay awake for a little longer, long enough to get his mom back to shore, or else she would end up drowning anyway.

For a few seconds, however, he was completely disoriented. He couldn't see the shore; he didn't know which way they had come from. He strengthened his water mode and threw his awareness out in all directions. Like this he discovered the slope of the ocean floor below them and, using it as his guide, began the long swim home.

Careful of his mom, Danny swam backwards, gripping her upper body against his chest to keep her head clear of the waves while he used his tailfin and other arm to move them through the water. He couldn't use his gills like this, and soon both exhaustion and the toxins flooding his veins had him gasping for breath. At some point, the roar of the waves became a steady roar of white noise in his ears.

He felt Fentonworks before he saw it – the debris crowding the water, two fast heartbeats at the edge of the beach. It seemed like days since Danny and his mom had left Vlad floating unconscious – dead? – to the bottom of the ocean. But it was still night.

Or was it? Darkness edged Danny's vision, and blurry spots dotted the middle of it. It was hard to see anything at all.

He knew he couldn't go on the shore. It was dangerous for him, because…

Well, because… for some reason it was.

So with a last burst of energy, Danny set his mom on the crest of a wave and willed it to carry her to shore. Arms pulled her from the surf. She was okay. She was okay.

_She's okay…_

Danny turned and started swimming north. There was a small cave there, somewhere, if only he could…

It was getting harder and harder to think.

Where was he going again?

What was he even doing?

He felt solid ground under his stomach and chest and face and arms. He tried to push himself up, get his feet under him, but his arms wouldn't move and for some reason he couldn't feel his legs.

Blinking, he realized that he couldn't see anything but a gray haze.

"Help," he whispered.

* * *

Maddie's tracker on the radar had all at once started moving again, in a straight line back to Fentonworks Beach. It was moving faster than any human could swim, and Jack didn't know what to make of it. But it was the only clue he had to his wife's whereabouts, so he turned the boat around and began to follow it.

It reached the shore long before he did. A minute later, his radio crackled to life: _"…ad? Dad?"_

Jack fumbled for the device on his belt. "Jazzypants? What's going on?"

" _She's okay… Mom's here. She's alive!"_

His breath caught in his throat.

" _Dad? Where are you? Are you okay?"_

"I'm fine," he replied, voice cracking. He wiped the tears that were starting to pool in his eyes. "Just hang in there. I'm coming back."

* * *

When the glow first appeared in the water, Sam had felt her heart skip a beat. Her first thought was that Plasmius was coming back. But soon enough, it became clear that the light was clean, pure silver, without any of the red that tinged Plasmius's aura.

Her body wilted. It felt like she had been holding her breath and finally could breathe again. She didn't know how long he had been gone, but it was long enough for her clothes to dry, stiff with salt, and for the wind to turn cold with the night air.

Sam watched Triton approach the shore. He still wasn't very close when he stopped, and a few seconds later Jazz Fenton and Tucker Foley were pulling someone else out of the water – Maddie Fenton.

Sam couldn't believe it. He'd really done it. He'd brought her back.

His mission done, Triton turned to the left and began to swim north. He wasn't moving in a straight line, nor was he swimming very quickly, and Sam began to have the sense that something was wrong. While the others were distracted with Mrs. Fenton, Sam jumped off of the staircase and ran up the beach, hoping to intercept him.

For the several minutes it took to get off of the Fentonworks property, she entirely lost sight of him. Sam didn't worry about it and kept jogging up the narrow stretch of beach that ran along the bottom of the cliff, positive that she would find him eventually.

Rounding a corner of jagged rocks, Sam came upon a wider stretch of sand, a section of beach that curved in a gentle arch before vanishing around another outcropping of the cliff side. Here, she found Triton.

He was lying on his stomach in the sand, his lower half continuing to be engulfed in water every time a wave hit the shore. His arms lay limp at his sides, like he hadn't even had the strength to try pulling himself out of the water. His face was turned away from Sam, only showing her the back of his head.

Sam inhaled sharply and sprinted to his opposite side, dropping to her knees in the sand. "Triton!"

He was breathing steadily, but his eyes were closed, face slack in unconsciousness. His white hair splayed over the sand, and his water-logged clothes sat heavy on his skin.

Sam reached out a hesitant hand toward his shoulder and shook it gently. "Triton?" she whispered. He didn't move, didn't give any indication that he could hear or feel her. She started to shake his shoulder more roughly, but then she stopped and withdrew her hand.

Triton's face had been drying in the crisp night breeze, even before Sam found him there. Already his gills had vanished and his ears mostly shrunk to human size. His skin had faded from soft, luminescent white to dull pink, while his eyebrows had darkened to black. Even his hair was beginning to darken as it dried.

Sam had withdrawn her hand from him in sheer bewilderment, because she recognized him.

This was Danny Fenton.


	19. Chapter 19

_Some secrets are meant to be known – but once known you can never forget them._

\- Pseudonymous Bosch

* * *

Sam frowned, her eyebrows slowly knitting together. Her first instinct was to think that she was mistaken - it was dark, she was exhausted, and she didn't have a clear view of his face anyway. Because Triton couldn't be Danny Fenton. Danny Fenton was just some dorky kid Sam had known since elementary school, while Triton was a merperson, _a mythical creature_ , who had only come on land in the last few weeks to hide for his own safety. Whatever Triton looked like as a human, there was no way Sam should recognize him. Maybe he only _resembled_ Danny Fenton.

She didn't understand why her fingers were shaking so badly when she reached out a hand to move the hair off of his forehead and cheek. She brushed the hair back, tucked some behind his ear, and sprung away, yelping, when the muscles in his face twitched. Sam froze for a few seconds, afraid he was waking up. Unlike before, right now she really didn't want him to wake up.

She stared at the right side of his face; the left was pressed against the sand. In her mind, she held up what she could see here against her memories of Danny Fenton.

And she had seen a lot of Danny Fenton since high school started. They had three classes together, of course, but it was more than that – they'd been classmates in the past, too. Back then, they had barely talked to each other, hardly acknowledged the other's existence. From day one this year, however, Danny Fenton had either been trying to talk to her or spurning all of her attempts to talk to him, so that in the end Sam had no idea what he was playing at. Several times she had caught him watching her, sometimes blatantly staring at her with this thoughtful and puzzled expression on his face like he was genuinely interested in her. Other times he seemed to go out of his way just to insult her.

Then against her will, she had started noticing him more often, too. When he wasn't huddled in conversation with Tucker Foley or getting involved in awkward situations, he seemed to zone out a lot. In the middle of class, at the beach those few weeks ago, even at the swim meet, he would just stare into space with a troubled or melancholy expression that didn't belong on the face of a fourteen-year-old.

Triton had a similar expression now. After Sam had moved his hair, his eyebrows had drawn together in some discomfort, like he was caught in an unpleasant dream. His lips that had been slightly parted came back together and dragged downward in a frown.

Sam swallowed heavily. He didn't just resemble Danny Fenton. No. They were the same person.

As if to emphasize that, a droplet of water rolled off of the top of his head and over his cheek, running under his eye like a tear and then slipping over his nose, leaving behind it a glowing trail of white.

A tight feeling began building in Sam's chest, like panic or anger or grief, she wasn't sure which. She didn't know what to think. She didn't know how this was possible.

_There are a lot of things in the world that I don't understand. Recently, something inexplicable has been happening to –_

"Shut up!" she hissed at her memory of Triton. "You're not helping things any."

Everything she knew about Triton, and likewise everything she knew about Danny Fenton, had been called into question. Her brain was making arguments and counterarguments faster than she could process. Triton was kind; Danny was a jerk. She had confided basically everything about herself in Triton because they were strangers; Danny had pretended they were strangers and learned everything about her. Triton was her only real friend; Danny had lied to her just like everyone else she had ever called friend.

But she was still treating them like two different people. That was wrong. Everything Triton had done, it had been Danny Fenton the entire time.

There was no Triton.

…What was she supposed to do with that?

"… _anny!"_ called a distant voice from down the beach. " _Danny!"_

It sounded like Tucker Foley, and he was coming their way.

Sam stared at the boy lying in front of her. Had he been Triton, Sam might have tried to hide him or distract Tucker from finding him in such a vulnerable position. As it were, Sam had no reason to do Danny Fenton any favors. She glanced around, saw a suitably big, jagged black rock a few yards away, and darted to duck behind it. A trail of indents in the sand, her boot prints, followed her, but she hoped Tucker wouldn't notice.

Peeking around the rock, Sam watched as Tucker rounded the edge of the cliff.

* * *

Tucker had stood watch over Mrs. Fenton while Jazz opened the lab and set up a cot inside. Then he helped her to carry her mom over the beach into the lab, where they gingerly laid the woman on the thin padding of the cot. The whole time, Tucker was antsy to go find Danny and see what had happened with Plasmius. He was also a little bit irritated that once again he was in the Fentonworks Lab and, once again, there was too much going on for him to enjoy it. He was going to have to get Danny to give him a proper tour one of these days. So much beautiful, shiny technology…

As Jazz draped a blanket over her mom, Tucker walked back to the lab door and, pointing over his shoulder to the beach, told Jazz, "I'm, uh, going to go find Danny."

Jazz frowned. "I thought you said he came inside to use the bathroom?"

 _Oh man._ "I did!" said Tucker. "And he did. And then he… went on a walk! I saw him leaving the beach like literally a minute before the wave hit. He's probably too scared to come back. I'm just gonna tell him everything's okay now. We'll be back before you can say 'evil merman attack'." Ignoring Jazz's bewildered face, Tucker ran out of the lab and started up the beach. Out of the corner of his eye, he could just see Mr. Fenton's boat approaching.

"Danny!" he called, once Fentonworks Beach had disappeared behind him. "Dude! Where are you? Danny!" He had to quit jogging after about a minute and stop to catch his breath; this was probably the only time outside of gym class he'd ever tried to run. When he could move again, Tucker proceeded at a very brisk walk.

"Danny!" Tucker came around a corner that was more cliff than beach, and there he found his best friend.

He was lying face-down in the sand, half in the water and half out, and was not moving.

" _Danny!_ " Tucker rushed over and dropped onto his knees next to him. He rolled Danny over, and Danny's body limply flopped onto its back. Half of his face was dry, while the other half that had been in the sand was splotchy with white merperson skin. Tucker wanted to say that was the only reason Danny looked so pale, but that would have been a lie.

Was he breathing? What if he wasn't breathing?

Tucker watched Danny's chest and was relieved to see it rising and falling. He was alive, at least. He still didn't look good. Tucker couldn't help being reminded of their 4th grade soda bottle aquarium-terrarium projects and the little pale bodies of the fish that had inevitably died and floated to the bottoms of the bottles. Not the most comforting flashback to be having right now.

"Danny, c'mon man, wake up." He lightly slapped Danny's cheeks, and when that failed, grabbed both of his shoulders and started to shake them. "Dude. Please. Don't do this."

Suddenly, Danny sucked in a huge, shuddering breath, and his eyes flew open, one blue and one glowing green. His nostrils flared, his eyes darted from side to side, and abruptly he yelled and sat up, practically knocking Tucker backwards in the process.

"Danny!" Tucker said, grabbing his shoulders again and forcing his friend to turn toward him. "You're okay! It's just me, man. Look. It's just me."

Danny stared unseeingly into Tucker's face for a few seconds, but then his eyes focused, and his expression of terror left his face. "Tucker?" he whispered. Whatever fight he had just mustered fled his body and he drooped. He probably would have fallen over if Tucker hadn't been holding him.

"What happened?" said Tucker. "What did that guy do to you?"

Danny raised a hand – still in merperson form, since his arms had been partially submerged, too – and rubbed his neck under his jaw, wincing. "Poison."

Tucker shivered. "Are you going to be okay? Do you need a doctor? Or your parents…?" Because who knew if a normal doctor could even treat whatever poison a merperson produced.

Danny shook his head. "It's fine. It's happened before." He raised his head and looked at Tucker, eyes wide with worry and gleaming with exhaustion. "My mom?"

"She's fine. You saved her, Danny."

Danny smiled softly. "Good," he whispered, and he shut his eyes and laid his forehead against Tucker's shoulder.

It took Tucker a second to realize he had fallen asleep again. "Hey. Hey, no, no, no, wake up." He shook his friend's shoulders, and Danny grimaced but opened his eyes again. "We have to get you back to Fentonworks. I had to lie to Jazz to make her stop thinking you were dead, and then your parents are probably going to be looking for you."

"Hmm-kay…"

"So… you know. Do your thing. Use your powers and dry off so we can go back."

Danny frowned, furrowing his brows like he was concentrating. Tucker waited, but nothing happened. "Uh, Danny?"

"Yeah?"

"Your powers aren't working, are they?"

Danny made a noncommittal humming noise and tried to go back to sleep. Tucker sighed. It didn't look like Danny was going to be any help for a while.

While Tucker got to his feet, he let Danny slump forward until his head was almost in his lap – if you could still call it a lap when it was a fish tail. Anyway, he got behind Danny, grabbed him under his arms, and dragged him out of the water. He wasn't sure if it was because of the tail that Danny was so heavy, or if Tucker just wasn't all that strong. Danny certainly seemed a lot heavier than his mom, though. Tucker could only move him a few feet before he dropped him – gently… sort of – onto the sand again.

Danny suddenly grabbed Tucker's wrist, and Tucker flinched a little at the feel of Danny's wet, cold, webby hand on his skin. "Tuck," mumbled Danny. "I can't feel my legs."

Tucker raised one eyebrow and said, "That's 'cause you don't have any, dude. That's kind of our problem right now."

Danny lifted his head, looked at his tail, and said, "Oh. Right."

Tucker sighed again and shrugged out of his jacket, which he used like a towel to dry Danny off. Between the jacket and just being out of the water, the tail soon split in two and started taking on the shape of legs and feet again. "Good enough." He then rubbed the jacket over Danny's hair, ignoring the way Danny made a face and grumbled.

Tucker stepped back and looked at his handiwork. The ends of Danny's hair were still white, and the skin under his shirt was, too, and maybe his legs had a few more scales than most people's, but for the most part, he looked human again. He just didn't have any pants.

Tucker's shoulders dropped. Reluctantly, he undid his belt and took off his own pants. Now down to his shirt and boxers, Tucker struggled to get Danny dressed, which was a bit like trying to dress a mannequin that occasionally moved, spoke, and did the opposite of what you wanted it to. Once the pants were on, Tucker added the jacket to help hide the tell-tale white that peeked from under his collar.

"Okay, let's stand up now," Tucker said. He grabbed Danny's hands and hauled the other boy to his feet. Danny's knees immediately buckled and he almost took a nosedive into the ground. Tucker had to loop one of Danny's arms over his shoulders and basically drag Danny back to Fentonworks.

They arrived at the lab to find it unlocked but empty. Tucker got Danny into the elevator and hit the button. In the sharp fluorescent lighting of the lab and elevator, Danny looked even worse. He was bedraggled, covered in sand, super pale, and only semi-conscious.

Maybe no one would notice.

The elevator pinged and the door opened into the kitchen. Tucker steered Danny out and made a beeline to the staircase.

" _There_ you are!" said Jazz. She had been sitting on the couch in the living room and had risen to her feet to meet them. "Mom woke up, and Dad took her upstairs so she could – what's wrong with Danny?"

So yeah, it was really, really noticeable that Danny was not okay. Tucker fumbled for an excuse. "Uh, looks like Danny got hit by the wave, too." He laughed weakly. "I found him passed out in the sand. But he's not dead, so everything's okay!"

Danny raised his head to look at Jazz, touched two fingers to his temple and saluted her. "Not dead," he added, helpfully.

Jazz glanced between them, like she couldn't decide whether to be consoled or angry. "You idiots," she growled at them. Her eyes stopped on Tucker. "What happened to your pants?"

"I… gave them to Danny. Because, uh, he must not have zipped his fly when he used the bathroom, you know that happens sometimes, and when the wave came it just sucked the pants right off of him. So, I loaned him mine." Jazz's face could have been drawn next to the word 'incredulous' in the dictionary. "I'm just gonna take him upstairs, let him get some rest. I'll go ahead and spend the night, too."

"No you won't," Jazz replied. "Your parents called. They want you home, _now_."

"Aw, man. Fine..." Under Jazz's penetrating glare, he coaxed Danny up the stairs one clumsy, painstaking step at a time. He couldn't have been more relieved when they got to Danny's bedroom and the door was safely closed behind them.

Tucker dropped his friend onto the bed. "You owe me, like, ten Nasty Burgers and a whole day at the arcade."

Danny was already asleep again. He had passed out as soon as his head hit the covers. Tucker sighed and dragged his friend into a more comfortable position, so at least his legs weren't hanging off the end of the bed, and then set off for home, trying to figure out what he was going to tell his mom and pops.

* * *

Danny woke up with a pounding headache. He glared at his ceiling for a few minutes, not entirely sure of how he'd gotten there. The last thing he remembered was swimming away from Vlad Plasmius, getting his mom back to the beach, and then – nothing.

Eventually he sat up. Everything _hurt_. His arms and legs and back and abdomen all protested moving, and muscles he didn't even know he had were crying out in pain. Looking down at himself, he realized he was wearing Tucker's clothes, which immediately filled in a lot of the missing information.

He could smell breakfast from the kitchen. His stomach growled, so he changed into a clean T-shirt and jeans, combed his hair until it looked less like a bird's nest, and headed downstairs.

Walking into the kitchen, he found Jazz at the stove making pancakes, and at the table his dad with one of the portable radars, his mom wearing her pajamas and drinking coffee – exhausted but alive – and Vlad Masters.

Danny froze. "You!"

Everyone looked at him. Vlad smiled genially and said, "Why, good morning, Daniel." **Don't do anything rash.**

Danny was too stunned to respond or even to move. What was he doing here? How was he alive?

"Danny?" said his mom. "Sweetie, are you okay?" Her voice was rough, and she had dark circles under her eyes, like she had caught a cold.

"I'm fine," he said automatically, unsmiling. Remembering the previous night, he smiled apologetically and said, "I guess I should be asking you that."

Hesitantly, he took a seat opposite Vlad at the table, eyes locked onto the man. He only half listened to his mom's answer. **What do you mean by rash?** he demanded. **You mean like telling everyone here what you really are?**

"I'm okay," his mom said. "Though I think I very nearly wasn't." Taking her husband's large hand, she smiled wryly and added, "I hear your father chased after me in a rowboat."

**I wouldn't if I were you, Daniel. The secret works both ways. You reveal me, and I can just as easily reveal what** _**you** _ **really are.**

"You betcha I did," said his dad. "And if I didn't have a boat, I would have swum after you. I'd chase you to the ends of the earth, baby." They leaned toward each other and kissed, right in front of Danny's nose – and Vlad's.

Danny smirked. He hadn't missed how Vlad's expression darkened with disgust. **I bet that kills you, knowing that my mom will never love you like that. She loves me, too, no matter what. She'd accept me. But I don't think she'd forgive you so easily.**

 **Are you so sure about that?** Something about the way he said that made Danny shiver; despite his claim, he found himself apprehensive and full of doubt.

"How _did_ you manage to escape?" prompted Vlad. "Not one but two of the dreadful creatures?"

His mom scowled, clenching her hands tightly around her coffee mug. "It's probably only thanks to there being two that I escaped." Danny's heart jumped, daring to hope. "I'm not sure of their relationship to each other, but they seemed to be acquainted. My guess is that there was a territorial dispute. The older male led the younger one into open water and, after some challenges passed between them, ambushed him. When it looked like the merboy had been dispatched, I used that chance to attack the older one with the Fenton Electricutioner."

"Ah, yes," said Vlad, rubbing his chest absently. "Quite a powerful weapon, that is." Danny snorted. Maybe the fruitloop wasn't as hale and hearty as he was pretending to be.

"But then the boy saved you, Mom," Jazz pointed out, transferring a pancake to a plate on the counter nearby. "He brought you back here."

 _Yeah. Totally a point in my favor._ Danny had to stop himself from grinning. Briefly, he also wondered how Jazz was taking the whole 'merpeople are real' thing. He made a mental note to question her about it later.

His mom wasn't smiling, though. "Jazz, I can assure you, whatever reason it had for bringing me back to shore, it wasn't out of the kindness of its heart."

"It's like hiding your food, Jazzypants," their dad explained. "Maybe it didn't want to eat your mother right there and then, but it didn't want anyone else to have her, either."

"But-" Danny started to protest, but Vlad's words cut across his brain.

 **But what? I heard that 'Daniel Fenton' was unconscious for all of this. You have no say in the matter.** Distressed, Danny nevertheless held his tongue, because Vlad was right.

"That does explain our problem of the missing merboy," Vlad went on, with a sly smile. "Who could imagine, it was hiding on land this whole time? The threat is much worse than we feared."

"Yeah, you heard what the one in the helmet said," said Danny's dad. "Talking about expanding its empire from out of the confines of the sea. These puppies can come on land now."

"And did the one calling itself 'King' even set off the alarms?" said Vlad, feeding the flames. "Clearly our defensive measures are not enough now. Who knows how many of these beasts have already slipped past the buoys and are hiding in our midst?"

 **What are you doing?** asked Danny. Vlad's eyes flicked to him, but he made no answer. Danny pressed: **You're a merperson, too. Why are you encouraging them to hunt us?**

"You're right," said Danny's mom. "All of this time we wasted – we had no idea about the holes in our security."

"Don't be too hard on yourself," Vlad simpered. "How could you have known? Incidentally, how is your work on the Siren Speeder progressing?"

"It's not," grumbled Danny's dad. "We put it on hold while we were searching for the merboy. Lot of good that did."

"Well," said Vlad, "if ever there were a time to finish that submarine, I would say it is now."

Danny's mom raised a brow, and the way she frowned thoughtfully made it seem like she caught Vlad's meaning. "You're certainly right that our defenses aren't good enough. If we can finish the Speeder, we can find the nest and-"

"-and wipe out those fishy fiends at their source!" finished her husband, slamming a fist onto the table.

And Danny got it. He understood why Vlad had been funding his parents all of these years. He understood why Vlad had come here now. It hadn't been to help the Fentons investigate the pictures from their buoys; that had had nothing to do with it. He had come because he knew they were almost finished with the Speeder and wanted to stir up their anger against the merpeople. That was what the 'special demonstration' at his welcome party had been about. Danny knew Vlad hated Birghid; he and the sirens probably wanted the whole Merfolk Empire dead.

He was going to use the Fentons to do it.

Fury and horror bubbled up inside of him. It must have shown on his face, because Jazz said, "Danny?" just as Vlad warned him, **Temper, Daniel.**

He couldn't stand it anymore. He shoved to his feet, the chair scraping loudly behind him, and announced, "I'm going to Tucker's." He didn't even wait for permission; he just walked out, slamming the door behind him.

Danny was still fuming by the time he made it to Tuck's place. He pounded his fist on the door, ready to explode about everything, and was a little taken aback when Mrs. Foley answered the door.

"Danny?" she said. "Tucker didn't tell us you were coming over."

"Ah…" Danny rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, ashamed of nearly yelling at his best friend's mom. "I kind of didn't tell him. My phone got lost in the ocean last night. Is it okay?"

"Of course, hon. You're welcome here any time, and after what happened…" She shivered. "Well, I'm sure you both want someone to talk to." Mrs. Foley ushered him inside, calling for her son. Then she asked, "How's your mother?"

"She's okay now. Thanks for asking."

Tucker came out of the kitchen. "Danny!" he exclaimed. Then, aware of his mom standing two feet away he toned it down and said, semi-casually, "Hey. What's up?"

"Can we talk?"

They went upstairs to Tuck's bedroom, but not before Mrs. Foley gave them both a plate of cookies and a glass of lemonade. Any time of the day, that lady was ready with the cookies and lemonade – something Danny was happy for now, since he'd stormed out before getting any breakfast.

"Okay, seriously – are you okay?" said Tucker, once the door was closed. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I was beaten up, poisoned, and washed up unconscious on the beach. Does that about cover it?"

"Ah. That bad, huh?"

Danny proceeded to tell Tucker everything that had happened the night before. When he came to the part about Plasmius's true identity, Tucker was floored.

" _That_ was Vlad _Masters?_ "

"It's not really that big of a surprise," Danny muttered, scowling. "I told you he was suspicious."

"Yeah, but I thought you were just being-"

"What, paranoid? Stop saying that, Tuck. Maybe I was, but it wasn't a bad thing. Look what happened."

He continued his story up to the point he passed out, although he skimmed over the details of how Vlad got to be half-merman; he wasn't quite ready to think about that yet, and he sure didn't want Tucker asking about it. Then he heard about the rest of the night from Tucker. When he learned what kind of excuses his friend had been feeding his sister, he grimaced. "You really painted me the hero, Tuck."

"Hey, I panicked! I thought I did pretty good."

Finally, he told Tucker the events of that morning, about how Vlad was holding his secret over his head and manipulating his parents into the genocide of the merfolk so that the human-eating sirens would have free rein of the ocean.

"The worst part is…" Danny was on his feet now, pacing, his voice climbing. "Tucker, I tried to fight back, and I couldn't touch him. If my mom didn't attack Vlad when she did, I'd be the sirens' prisoner somewhere at the bottom of the ocean right about now. I can't say anything against him, I can't fight him. He's pure evil, and he's going to get away with it! Because I can't. Do. _Anything!"_

Their glasses of lemonade exploded.

"Wah!" Tucker shouted, ducking down and hiding his face with his hands. "Watch it!"

Danny looked at the shards of glass on the floor and Tucker's desk, the lemonade running down the wall. He hadn't meant to do that.

He sat down on the end of Tuck's bed and squeezed his head between his hands, taking deep breaths. "Sorry, Tuck… It's just, I feel so _angry_. And helpless. I thought my powers were getting stronger and stronger, and they're not. They're worthless. I'm just as weak and- and powerless as ever."

"Don't say that, man," said Tucker, trying to sop up the lemonade with a shirt before it could hurt his computer. "Vlad Masters has had his powers for twenty years, and you've had yours for only, what, a month? Of course you weren't going to beat him in a fight. You just have to keep practicing. And in the meantime, try to get your parents to see that the merboy is a good guy."

"How? He can't just walk up to them and introduce himself. They'll kill him – _me._ "

Tucker shrugged. "Keeping fighting Vlad and whatever monsters he decides to send at you next. Save some people. You know, hero stuff. Then they'll have to change their minds."

"Maybe…"

Danny helped Tucker to finish cleaning up the glass shards, and by that point he was feeling wiped out again. He decided to go home. Thanking Tucker for letting him blow off some frustration, and then apologizing to Mrs. Foley for destroying her glasses with his 'clumsiness', he made the short walk back home.

He reached his front door just as Vlad Masters was closing it. On the doorstep, Danny glowered at him while Vlad smirked back with his smug, stupid, goateed face.

 **I don't care what you're planning,** he told Vlad. **You're not going to get away with it.**

 **Ooh, I'm so scared,** Vlad sneered.

 **I mean it,** said Danny. **I'm going to prove to my parents that they can trust my merperson half. Then I'm going to expose you and every messed up thing you're doing.**

 **Is that a threat, or just wishful thinking? It's so hard to tell.** Vlad shrugged and straightened the jacket of his suit. **Either way, Daniel – challenge accepted.**

"Have a nice day!" Vlad strutted down the sidewalk to where his chauffeur was waiting and disappeared behind a shiny black door. Danny glared at the car until it was out of sight.

Danny made his decision, then, and he knew he hadn't been this sure of anything since he had decided to become an astronaut back when he was five. He didn't care how long it took. He didn't care how hard he would have to train. He wasn't going to rest until he could punch that smug smile right off of the billionaire's face.

He was going to bring Vlad down.


	20. Chapter 20

_A circle of friends doesn't always keep perfect relationships._

\- Anthony Liccione

* * *

Sam Manson had a firm belief in the power of waking up early and making the most of a day. On a typical Sunday, she started by jogging three laps around her family's estate and then her daily exercises in the swimming pool – which always had to be early, before her mom and her socialite friends could show up and monopolize the pool. Her homework was always finished on Saturday, and so as long as her parents or Paulina didn't have anything planned for her, it left the rest of her day open to read novels, write poetry, and draw, all while listening to music. Sam measured her days by how many pages in her notebook or sketchpad were filled up. Productivity, in her opinion, meant output, and in that way she could open her books and know that her time hadn't been wasted.

That was her unbreakable routine, except Sam hadn't been able to sleep Saturday night. Now it was noon, and she was still lying in bed, glaring at the wall. Her body was stiff, her eyes scratchy, and her head muddled. But she had no inclination to move.

At the moment, she was feeling pretty worthless, if she was going to be honest with herself.

More than that, she felt guilty.

She wanted to say she had no reason to feel guilty. She wanted to believe that if anyone should have felt guilty, it was Danny Fenton. She wanted to be mad at him for lying to her, for pretending to be someone he wasn't, for letting her grow so attached to Triton that she had started to consider him her friend…

But after last night, she couldn't muster any anger. At least not at him. The only person she was angry with was herself.

Because Sam got why Danny had lied to her. While she couldn't begin to understand how he had become the way he was, how he'd gotten the unbelievable power to change into a merperson, she could at least understand what was at stake for him. If anything he had told her as 'Triton' was true, it sounded like not even his parents knew what he could do – no, not what he _could_ do, she reminded herself. What he _had to_ do. Whether he liked it or not, he would change forms when he touched water.

That explained the ridiculous rain gear Danny Fenton was wearing every time the sky turned overcast these days, or the rubber boots and poncho at her swim meet. He was living in fear of water, in fear of being exposed, every minute of every day.

And his parents didn't know. His parents, who _hunted_ merfolk, didn't know. He didn't trust for them to learn his secret, most likely because he was afraid they would hate him, or worse, kill him if they did. Not to mention what his school life would be like if anyone knew. If one classmate found out, chances were that the whole school, if not the whole world thanks to the Internet, would know about him by the next day.

So of course Danny wouldn't tell her. She imagined what he must have felt when she walked in on him in the pool that first time. Sam wasn't his friend, then. She was just a threat. And while she had begun to consider Triton her friend, Sam was the only one who had used that word to describe their relationship. Chances were that Triton – _Danny_ – never came to view her the same way.

Even so, Sam had confided in him, but he had never forced her to share that information about her life. Danny as Triton had never pried; all he had ever done was to be a good listener and occasionally offer sympathetic comments or make jokes. Anything he had learned about her during those times had obviously never made it outside of that room, or else Sam would have known about it. She'd said some pretty vicious things about Paulina and the other A-listers; there's no way that wouldn't have come back to haunt her, if they knew.

Which they didn't, meaning Danny had never said a word.

Danny was fighting monsters, hiding from both his parents and other merpeople, trying to keep his secret and still going to class every day. Sam didn't know why he had taken the risk of meeting her at the Neptune High pool all of those times, deliberately putting himself in danger to hang out with her. He didn't owe her anything.

That much was true. From Danny's point of view, Sam was just a classmate, one who had ignored him and even said some pretty mean things to him in the past. That wasn't going to change just because of a few nice conversations. Sam was acting like he had betrayed her so terribly, but he didn't owe her anything.

If anything, Sam owed him.

Her face screwed up in a grimace, and she rolled over in bed, squeezing one of her pillows and digging her nails into it where it was grasped in her fists.

She owed him. He had spent time with her when he had no reason to – no reason except that she had _asked_. She was the one who had invited him to come back to the pool. That wasn't his idea; he had been trying to escape! But he had come back anyway. He had listened to her, kept her secrets, made her feel genuinely happy, and what had she done for him?

Left him, after he had risked his life to save his mom from a monster that had frightened Sam so much she hadn't been able to move, left him unconscious and _poisoned_ for anyone to stumble upon. What if Tucker hadn't been alone? What if Mr. Fenton had already gotten back, or Mrs. Fenton had woken up? What if Tucker hadn't known about Danny's secret? And Sam had abandoned him because she felt mad?

How _selfish_ could a person get? Sam always complained about her parents and Paulina and Star and the rest being so self-absorbed, while the whole time she was just as bad.

She felt utterly disgusted, and right now she couldn't even be sure if Danny was alive.

Sam growled and rolled over again. This time her eyes made contact with her writing desk, with the cork board hanging on the wall above it, with a picture she had spent about half of the night staring at and the other half wanting to tear down and rip to pieces.

It was the sketch she had drawn of 'Triton' the night she had met him. She hadn't lied to him when she said she hadn't been able to sleep after that. Buzzing with energy, afraid she had imagined the experience, Sam had sat up for half of the night trying to capture Triton exactly as she had seen him in the water. She had done dozens of other sketches of him since, but this one had been her favorite.

It was before he had realized she was there. He had been floating in the middle of the pool, eyes closed and head tilted back into the water, arms limp at either side and his tail dipping downward. His white hair had drifted softly about his head, and his whole body glowed with the same intensity of moonlight. His face had seemed so peaceful, as though he were sleeping. Sam had been able to watch him for several minutes, frozen to the spot in wonder and unbelief.

This was the scene Sam had drawn that night. The angle was from the side, and Sam hadn't included any suggestion of water, feeling that it detracted from the clarity she wanted for the fins. The result was a figure suspended in space.

Even now, her heart rate sped up when she looked at it. It reminded her that merpeople were real in this world, and maybe many other things were, too. It reminded her that the figure she had come to know as 'Triton' was a ruse. And it reminded her of how badly she had treated Danny, who in the end she had a much easier time believing in than Triton. Who was 'Triton', anyway, but a mysterious figure she had blindly taken a fascination with, whose trials and adventures did not exist outside of that room at Neptune High?

Danny Fenton was real. And Sam had wronged him.

Finally, Sam drew herself out of her pillows and blankets. She sat hunched over in her bed, unable to take her eyes off of the sketch on her wall.

What was she going to do? Tomorrow she would have to face him. Was she supposed to carry on like nothing had happened? No. That was impossible. Whatever relationship they'd had before, she'd never be able to meet 'Triton' at the pool again because she'd never be able to pretend that everything was the same between them. She didn't even know how she was going to deal with 'Danny Fenton' the next morning. He sat right next to her.

She had to tell him. She was going to tell him the truth, and then she was going to apologize.

Sam thought making that decision would help her feel better, but it didn't. Guilt continued to writhe inside of her. Eventually she got up, put on shorts, a T-shirt, and running shoes, and ran laps until her feet blistered.

* * *

The last person Danny wanted to deal with Monday morning was Dash Baxter.

But, if his freshman year of high school had taught him anything, it was that the Universe was pointedly against him and bent on making every day of his life more difficult than the one before.

He got to Lancer's classroom without incident, but maybe the way Sam was giving him a strange look should have been a clue. No sooner had he and Tucker sat down than the blond quarterback, Paulina at his side, was looming over him.

It was the first time Dash had approached him, let alone talked to him, since their meeting behind the bleachers. _So much for the truce_.

"You finally decided to show your face, huh, Fentina?" Yup, and there were the derogatory nicknames he had so been coming to miss.

"I, uh, wasn't exactly hiding it, Dash."

"You wanna explain just what happened Saturday night?"

"I heard it was a mermaid!" called a nasally voice across the room.

"Shut up, Mikey!" snapped Dash. He turned back to Danny. "So yeah – care to tell us just why I got wailed on by a frickin' _mermaid_ at your beach?"

"Technically it was a mer _man_ ," Danny pointed out.

"I don't care if it was a mer-bunny!" cried the football player. "Look, Fenton," he growled, leaning in close. "I'm just trying to live my life like the next guy. But every time you or your freaky family shows your faces, something terrible happens to me! First my face," his nose was still slightly crooked from the accident, "and now, I'm almost drowned by something that ain't even supposed to exist!"

Danny clenched his fists on the top of his desk until his nails were biting into his palms. "You think we _planned_ for that to happen? My mom got kidnapped! She could have died!" Danny took a deep breath, trying to calm down before he did something like blow up a water bottle. "Look, my parents have been telling you – all of you," he added, looking around the class at all of the students who were watching them, "for years that merpeople were real and that they were dangerous. It's not my fault you didn't believe them."

"Well, they better do something about them," said Dash. "Or else."

Danny narrowed his eyes. "Is that a threat?"

Dash suddenly seemed to remember who he was talking to. Some of the anger and arrogance in his eyes broke, and he flinched.

"No, I'm just saying. They better do something about them or else someone's gonna get hurt." Glowering, Dash turned and threw himself into his chair at his desk several rows up.

Paulina was still standing over his desk, looking down at him with arms crossed and an unhappy expression. Jabbing a finger at Danny, she spat, "Just because your parents aren't total crackpots, don't think this makes you any less of a freak." Then she spun on her toes, her hair flipping over her shoulder, and went to her own seat.

"That was unusually direct of her," Tucker observed.

Danny sighed, running a hand through his hair. "She's just scared." He'd heard her heartbeat; through the whole conversation, it had been running fast. In fact, looking around the room, anyone who had been at the party Saturday night looked exhausted, like they hadn't gotten much sleep. Maybe they'd had nightmares. It wasn't stopping Kwan from telling the story enthusiastically and with wild gesticulations though, and the other students in the class were eating it up.

"Hey… Danny?" came a voice to his left.

Danny glanced at Sam, whom he'd never expected to talk to him – as Fenton, at least – ever again. She looked nervous and just as worn out as the other A-listers, and her heart was racing. Danny frowned, puzzled. "Sam?"

"Can we talk?" she said.

"Uh, sure?"

"I-"

Just then, the bell rang, and Mr. Lancer's voice commanded their attention. "Alright, people, I don't care what kind of mythical creature may or may not have attacked Amity Beach this weekend, it's time for English class. Get back to your seats."

"Later," he mumbled to her, conscious of her pained expression. What in the world did she have to tell him?

He wasn't going to find out any time soon. That entire morning, at every opportunity, his classmates and then students he didn't even know kept approaching him and interrogating him, wanting to know what had gone down Saturday night, whether his parents had killed the mermaid – "mer _man_ " – or not, if it was safe for them to go near the beach, even if it was safe for them to use the toilet, which Danny had to acknowledge was a legitimate question now. It felt like he was reenacting his parents' Merfolk Awareness Program, only now he was the Fenton in charge and people were actually listening.

Several more times Sam tried to pull him aside to tell him whatever she wanted to say, and each time some other student would butt in.

He was getting really tired of it.

He got to lunch after chemistry class and met Tuck at their usual table. "If one more person asks me if merpeople can attack them in their bathtub, I'm going to flip."

"Of course they can't," said Tucker, snorting. A second later, he jerked his head up and asked, "Can they?"

"Really, Tuck?"

"Just saying," the technophile said, holding up his hands in surrender. "We had a toilet monster, why not a bathtub monster?"

"No, I know," said Danny. He sighed. "And I appreciate that they don't think my parents are crazy anymore – really, I do – but I just wish they would leave _me_ out of it."

"Speaking of which," said Tucker, nodding his head toward something over Danny's shoulder.

Groaning, expecting to have to give another merfolk lecture, Danny looked behind him. Thankfully, it was only Sam.

She approached their table, opposite Danny, and looked between them. Her eyes lingered on Tucker uncertainly, but she must have decided that whatever she had to say was safe for him to hear, too. "Hi. Can I… can I join you?"

One of Tucker's eyebrows rose in astonishment. He looked at Danny as though to confirm he was hearing it right. Danny just shrugged at him, equally bewildered, and to Sam said, "Yeah… sure."

Nodding and swallowing nervously, Sam sat down next to Tucker, who scooted over to make room for her. The way she was looking at Danny was incredibly intense, and he started to feel nervous.

"So," he said, trying to scare the awkwardness away with his voice. "What's up?"

Sam took a deep breath and let it out. She closed her eyes for a few seconds, and when she opened them again said, "I know."

Danny and Tucker's eyes snapped to each other. Tucker twitched his eyebrows in a way that said, _Does she mean what I think she means?_ Danny made a face back as if to say, _I don't know! Play dumb!_

He laughed nervously. "Um, know what?"

Sam looked around them, obviously uncomfortable, and leaned in. Quietly, she said, "I know that you're Triton."

Even with the few seconds of ominous forewarning, Danny was dumbfounded. His mouth fell open and all he could do was gape at her, horrified, trying to figure out when and how she could have put it together. He tried to think of something to say in response, but it was like he couldn't feel his tongue.

"Wait," said Tucker. "Who's Triton?"

Sam frowned, looking puzzled. "You know. His," she lowered her voice to a whisper, "his merperson half."

For a second, Tucker just blinked. "No way… You know?" he exclaimed. Then he whirled on Danny. "She's _seen_ you?"

"You didn't know?" said Sam.

"No, I didn't know!" replied Tucker, altogether too loudly. People were starting to look their way. "Danny, when did that happen? _Triton?_ "

"Hey," said Sam, her own voice climbing. "It's not his fault, and don't you think you're-"

**Will both of you just** _**shut up** _ **?**

Tucker and Sam winced. Danny couldn't find himself feeling remorseful, though. Trembling, he managed to say, "We're not talking about this here," before standing up and stalking out of the cafeteria.

He led them to the janitor's closet down the hall. He peeked inside, found it empty, turned on the light, and ushered the others inside. Only after glancing furtively up and down the hallway did he join them and close the door.

"Alright, spill," said Tucker, crossing his arms and glaring at Sam. "What do you know about his mer-half?"

"That's not important," Danny said. "How you know about my human half is the real question." Danny had a lot of other questions, too, like _Did you tell anyone?_ and _Are you mad at me?_ but those would have to come later.

"I saw you on the beach Saturday night," she admitted to Danny, "after your fight with Plasmius. I saw you change." Then she addressed Tucker, clearly having missed Danny's implicit warning, and Danny was still in too much shock to intercept her. "And I caught him looking like Triton at the pool a couple of weeks ago."

Danny groaned. Tucker looked _pissed_. "A couple of _weeks_ ago?" he said. "Someone found out about your merperson half a couple of weeks ago, and you didn't think I should know? When exactly did this happen?"

Danny swallowed thickly. "The – the first night at the pool," he said.

"Danny! What were you thinking? Why didn't you tell me?"

His eyes were turned toward a mop and bucket when he answered. "I didn't tell you... because I knew you'd say I shouldn't meet with her again."

"What are you, his mom?" said Sam, incredulously. Danny really wished she wouldn't say any more.

"No!" protested Tucker. To Danny, he said, "And you're right, I would have said that. So, instead you just kept meeting with her in secret? And that's the real reason you didn't want me going back to the pool with you, isn't it? Not because you felt bad about asking for my help, but because you were deliberately meeting her behind my back and putting yourself in danger. You _lied_ to me."

"Tucker-"

"And this isn't the first time!" He pointed at Danny accusingly. "Ever since you got your powers, you've been lying to me. You don't tell me when you get new powers, you don't tell me when someone finds out about you. I bet there's still things I don't know about!"

Danny couldn't answer. But his silence was enough.

"There are." Tucker gaped. "You're still keeping secrets from me, even now."

"Look, Tucker," Danny tried again.

"I thought I was your best friend, Danny."

Danny's heart clenched in his chest. "You _are_ my best friend, Tuck."

"Well, you're sure not acting like it." Tucker inhaled sharply and frowned into a corner, like he was too angry to speak. When he finally turned back to Danny, he said, "I've been doing everything I can to help you. I've covered for you with your family. I tried to help you figure out your powers. I faced a mud monster with you. And both times you went in the ocean, and I didn't know if you were going to come back alive or not, I had to think about what I was going to tell your parents when you never came home. I didn't ask for any of this, Danny, but I've been trying hard because you're my best friend in the world. But apparently that wasn't enough for you."

He shrugged, shook his head, and made for the door. "I'm done."

"Tucker!" Danny reached out a hand for Tuck's shoulder, but the other boy shrugged him off.

"I need some space, man. Just… leave me alone."

The door latched shut behind him.

Danny stared at it for a few seconds, astounded. When at last he could peel his eyes away, he glanced at Sam, who seemed to be in an equal state of shock.

For a second, he had forgotten she was even there. Everything she had said came rushing back now. Danny looked away, muttering, "Are you going to yell at me and storm off, too? If so, now's your chance."

Morosely, Danny slumped into the floor next to one of the supply shelves, ignoring the grime caked on the floor of what was a surprisingly filthy cleaning closet. He propped his elbows against his knees, hung his head, and clasped his hands over the back of his neck.

Sam crouched down across from him. "I'm not going to yell at you."

Danny raised his head. "You're not?"

The girl smiled wryly. "That would feel too much like kicking a puppy." More seriously, she said, "I'm sorry I got you in trouble with your friend."

He sighed. "No, that's my fault. I…" He lowered his head again. "I think I deserved that."

A few seconds of silence passed between them. Distantly, they could hear the chatter of students in the cafeteria. Someone walked by the door, but they passed it and their footprints receded down the hall.

"Also, I'm sorry, about Saturday," said Sam.

Danny looked at her, lost. "What for?"

"When I found you… you were hurt, but I was too upset about what I saw to help you. So instead, when I heard someone coming, I left you there."

Panic struck Danny like a shock from the Fenton Electrocutioner – which really had a terribly morbid name. Why hadn't his dad gotten to name that one the Fenton Mer-Zapper like he'd wanted? And the only reason Danny was asking himself that was because he was so frazzled by the fact that maybe, on top of everything, someone _else_ had seen him.

Sam must have noticed Danny's bad reaction, because she quickly added, "Luckily it was just Tucker! But that's not the point. What if it _wasn't_ Tucker, and you got hurt or killed because of me?"

Danny had to think about what Sam was apologizing for. Then he chuckled. "So, you're saying 'sorry' for something I didn't even know happened." He smiled, even though he didn't feel especially happy, given the circumstances. "I forgive you. Do you… do you forgive me?"

"For what?"

He grimaced. "I lied to you. Even though we're friends, I lied to you, too. Seems like that's all I do…"

Sam was smiling genuinely, looking way more pleased than Danny had expected. "I forgive you," she said. "After all, that's what friends do, right?"

Danny almost agreed with her automatically, but he thought about Tuck and stopped. "I hope so…"

Guessing what he was thinking, Sam assured him, "He'll come around. I'm sure you had a good reason for what you did."

"Maybe…"

"Well," said Sam, and she changed the subject, pouring some cheer into her words for Danny's benefit. "You're half merman. That certainly explains a lot!"

"It does?" Danny honestly hadn't thought he had been acting too differently at school.

"But, calling me 'crazy' for believing in merpeople was a bit much, don't you think?"

He flushed. "I-" And then everything spilled out. "Look, I know I was a jerk to you. I just thought, maybe if you hated _me_ , as Fenton, there'd be less chance of you ever finding out that I was actually Triton. But it was driving me nuts, and I tried to apologize to you but apparently I only made things worse. And then I thought if you ever knew who I really was, you wouldn't ever want to hang out with me again, and I really hated thinking about that because you're such a cool person and I really like you." He blushed even more furiously. "As- as a friend. I like you, as a friend."

Sam blinked at him a few times. Then she started laughing.

"What?" he said.

"All this time," said Sam between chuckles, "I thought 'Triton' was this cool and mysterious figure, with this dark past and mercenaries after his head, only to find out that the whole time it was really just you."

Meaning, not cool or mysterious. "Gee, thanks," Danny grumbled, and he couldn't help feeling let down after confessing his feelings like that and getting laughed at as a response.

"Not like that," said Sam, smiling. "I mean, I think I might like Danny Fenton a lot better than Triton, if I had the chance to get to know him."

"You," Danny stammered, "you think so?"

Sam crossed her arms jokingly. "Well, you'll have your work cut out for you. I'm not a pushover."

"No, you're certainly not," Danny agreed, and smiled.

"Why don't you start by telling me how this happened to you?"

He nodded. "Yeah, I guess you deserve to know."

So, Danny spent the rest of the lunch hour in the janitor's closet with Sam, telling her the story from beginning to end, from the moment he'd slipped and fallen off of a classmate's boat (which wasn't quite true, but he'd promised Dash to keep that secret, and Sam didn't seem like the sort of person to stay quiet about that) to the revelation that Vlad was trying to wipe out the Merfolk (he couldn't care less about keeping Vlad's secret). Sam had endless questions for him, and in their next class, which they had together, Danny could tell she was dying to ask more. They ended up swapping phone numbers, and for the first time Danny was getting text messages from someone who wasn't Tuck or his family.

Danny was thrilled. Sam knowing about him wasn't a terrible thing at all.

But Tucker didn't even look at him during Spanish class and went so far as to change seats to get away from him, and when Danny tried to catch him after class, he didn't even turn around.

It looked like things were still far from perfect. But Tucker would forgive him eventually. He had to.

… didn't he?

* * *

"No, it is my pleasure, Mayor Montez," said Vlad, spinning his office chair toward the window occupying the wall behind him. The ocean, vast and dark under the night sky, stretched away beneath him, visible for miles. "I'm so concerned about the safety of the residents of Amity Beach, and I feel a town hall forum is _just_ what the people need to calm their fears about this new merperson threat. I'm honored you would have me attend. And yes, I'm sure the Fentons will be more than happy… Yes… Ah, I see. Very good… Then I'll await your call."

Vlad swiped his thumb across the screen of his phone and replaced it on the surface of his desk. He reclined in his chair, clasping his hands across his lap, and continued to observe the Atlantic.

"You wish your parents to trust you, eh Daniel?" he murmured. "I promise, it will not be so easy as you think."

The meeting of the town hall Mayor Montez was arranging for the end of the week had given Vlad an idea. Considering it, it slowly bloomed, with all of the grace of a coral unfurling.

He would need to speak to his Alchemist.

As he rose to leave his home, he logged into the Fentonworks mainframe and shut down every buoy from the north to south end of Amity Beach, simultaneously commanding his own decoy program to supply data for the rest of the night. He expected to return by morning – with a few 'gifts' for the boy who had spurned his offer.

"No, it shall not be easy at all."


	21. Chapter 21

_if  
_ _the ocean  
_ _can calm itself,  
_ _so can you.  
_ _we  
_ _are both  
_ _salt water  
_ _mixed with  
_ _air._

\- Nayyirah Waheed

* * *

"I don't believe it," said Danny, gawping at the other side of the cafeteria. "Mikey. He replaced me… with _Mikey._ "

Using his dual citizenship status as a nerd, Tucker had, seemingly overnight, incorporated himself into the ranks of Mikey, Nathan, and the rest. They currently appeared to be having a blast discussing battle tactics – i.e. how to brace your wrist for the most advantageous dice throw - in _Dungeons and Dragons_.

"He doesn't even play D&D. Who would he play it with? I'm the only person he hangs out with!"

For a moment, Tucker's eyes met Danny's from across the room, and his good cheer faltered. But only for a moment.

"To be fair," said Sam, "he probably feels like you replaced him with me. Not that I'm taking his side!" she tacked on, when Danny's glower fell on her.

"I didn't replace him! What's wrong with me wanting to have more than one friend?" Immediately seeing the hypocrisy in his words, Danny flinched and slumped in his seat.

"Which is why you kept me a secret from him," Sam drawled. She rolled her eyes and laughed once, a puff of air through her nose. "I can't help but feel like I'm witnessing a failing marriage here. Except I'm not sure if that makes me the child in that scenario or the hidden mistress." Glancing between them, she decided, "No, definitely the mistress."

"I apologized," said Danny. "But he won't answer any of my texts, and every time I try to approach him, he runs away from me!"

"Just give him some time. He'll forgive you eventually."

"I guess." The thing was, Danny had never seen Tucker angry before. Irritated, sure, exasperated occasionally, but never angry. They'd never had a fight like this. Or were they even fighting? Danny just felt like he was on the receiving end of a very cold shoulder.

And really, so what that he had kept his meetings with Sam secret? Sure, he had lied to Tucker to do it, but in the end Sam was not even a threat. Danny couldn't see what the big deal was.

_It's more than that, and you know it,_ a voice in the back of his mind niggled. He tried to ignore it.

"So, uh, Danny," said Sam, after an awkward stretch of silence between them. "What are you… doing after school today?"

Danny's eyes flicked up to her from the tabletop, and all of a sudden he felt nervous. It struck him that, for the first time, Sam was hanging out with him, with _Fenton_. They were eating lunch together, exactly like real friends would. "I, uh, thought I should start training. You know, for the next time Vlad tries to kill me. I was probably going to go to the pool," he added, hoping that Sam would want to join him.

"I've been thinking about that," said Sam. "You seriously need a better place to practice."

He shrugged. "Eh. It's fine."

"It's the high school pool, Danny. It's not fine."

She was right. The pool was terrible. "The thing is, I don't really know anywhere else _to_ go."

"Why don't you just use the beach near your house? Not the Fentonworks Beach, but that stretch where you washed up on Saturday?" Sam winced at the memory but went ahead with her suggestion. "There aren't any public beaches around for at least a mile, and I realize I don't know how your parents' equipment works, but it seems like you'd be far enough away from their buoys to avoid getting caught. Plus fresh air, fresh water, room to swim. What's not to like?"

"I mean, that's true… " Danny rubbed the back of his neck. "It just feels like every time I go near the ocean, something tries to kill me."

"That's even better!" exclaimed Sam. At Danny's appalled expression, she continued, "You wanted to train, right? What better way to train than having to beat up whatever attacks you? Call it 'learning on the job'. Besides, if what you said about the mutant mudpuppy's right, not even the pool can be guaranteed monster-free anymore." Leaning in close and smiling way too much for Danny's liking, she pointed a finger at his chest and said, "You could be attacked _anywhere_. You've got to be ready for it."

Danny gulped. "You sure know how to comfort a guy."

"Okay," said Sam, nodding cheerfully, "it's settled. After school today – you and me, on a beach, in the middle of nowhere. Let's make it happen."

"Uh… you got it."

It was at about that point that a dark shadow gathered above their table, blocking out the white fluorescents on the ceiling. Looking up, they found Paulina Sanchez standing over them, flanked by Star and Valerie. None appeared very happy. Considering Paulina's face, Danny would go so far as to use the word 'menacing'.

"What do you think you're doing?" she demanded, and at first Danny wasn't sure if she was talking to him or Sam. Her next words clarified it: "Why are you eating with this loser?"

Sam scowled and crossed her arms. "Danny's not a 'loser'. Anyway, it's none of your business who I eat lunch with."

Danny felt like he should help out somehow, but the only words that came out of his mouth were a remarkably unhelpful, "Yeah... what she said."

"It is my business," argued the Latina girl, "because when _you_ go around letting losers talk to you, you make everyone think they can talk to _us_. Look," she said, gesturing to one of the tuba players in the school band, who was patting down his hair as he approached them.

As soon as the tubaist opened his mouth, Valerie said, "No," and he dragged himself dejectedly away.

"People have been asking us out all day," said Paulina with a distasteful sniff. "All because of you and your loser boyfriend. It's been completely _exhausting_!"

"Wait, he's not my boyfriend!" exclaimed Sam, at about the same time Danny protested, "She's not my girlfriend!"

"Then unless he's doing your homework for you, I want this," Paulina pointed one manicured nail between them, "to stop. _Now_."

Sam stood up, her hands clenched at her sides. "Maybe I don't want it to stop."

"Samantha, what are you doing?" hissed Star. "Don't you know that is like, _so_ totally social suicide?!"

"It's Sam," said Sam. "Not Samantha. Sam."

Paulina rolled her eyes. "Whatever."

"No, not whatever," said Sam. "I've put up with you for years to make our parents happy. But you know what? I'm through with it. I'm through with you. You're shallow, and you're mean, and I can't believe I ever let people think we were friends."

"Shallow?" echoed Paulina. "Nuh-uh, you did _not_ just call me shallow."

"I just did. And you know what else? I've never _once_ thought you were pretty," Sam finished with a smirk.

Danny thought Paulina was about to slap her – either that or claw her eyes out. He swore he'd never seen a person turn that color before.

"Why you… you… you… _Ugh_!" She spun around like she was about to storm off, but then she whirled back. She was _seething_. "Well, I've never liked you either, sweetheart. You're creepy and totally depressing, and I know you never used the hair products I gave you for Christmas last year because if you had your hair wouldn't be so frizzy and dull and ugly. So you can keep your loser, but don't come crying to us when you want back into civilization. We're through. Let's go, girls." Flipping her hair, the queen of the A-listers led her group away. Star looked a little put out by the whole thing, but Valerie was smirking with some hint of satisfaction, like a victor's pride.

_Tucker was right,_ thought Danny, speechless. _Girls_ are _scary._

"Well," said Sam, sitting back down. She clapped her hands together like she was brushing dirt off of them. "That was easier than I expected it to be."

"What you did just now – are you sure that's okay?" Danny watched Paulina and the others walk all the way back to their table, just to make sure they didn't decide to return and spork them to death.

"What? Oh, yeah. I've been saving that for years. Although it wasn't _quite_ how I'd rehearsed it, it was still completely satisfying. I have no regrets."

Danny was baffled. "You had that ready for _years_? So… why now?"

"I was waiting for the right occasion." When Danny did nothing but stare uncomprehendingly at her, she said, " _You_ , Danny. Meeting you, becoming your friend, and then seeing you stand up to Plasmius without even flinching? It made me think I should start being a bit braver, too."

"You're giving me way more credit than I deserve," said Danny, rubbing the back of his neck, his face growing hot. He had too many problems in his life and way too many flaws to start being a good influence on anyone. "Besides, that was almost scarier than Plasmius."

"Then great! I feel braver already."

* * *

Danny led Sam up to the Fentonworks Beach from the south. It was a roundabout way to go, but with the staircase still in shambles and his parents probably occupying the lab, it was by far the safest route.

The Beach was a mess. While Vlad had _supposedly_ hired crews to rebuild the stairs and Dock and to haul the rest of the wreckage away, none of the crews had started their work and the majority of the trash from that day continued to lie scattered across the sand.

Seeing it, Danny's ire resurfaced. "Look at that," he said, throwing his arms out toward the debris. "Not only did Vlad destroy all this stuff, he was the one who put it there in the first place! Now he's too petty or spiteful to even clean it up. For some reason, _I'm_ the only one who seems to care."

"Why are your parents friends with him again?"

Danny clasped his hands next to his cheek and swooned mockingly. "Because 'dear old Vladdy' is such a 'precious friend' who would do _anything_ for them."

" _Gag_."

"I know. Even before I knew he was literally evil, I knew he wasn't any good."

"How is it parents can be so thick?"

"Beats me."

They continued up the beach, past even where Sam had found Danny the other night, to the small cave in the side of the cliff that had formed under an overhang of rock. It was far enough from Amity Beach that the only hint of the city was the rush of cars on the highway somewhere far above their heads, almost inaudible over the crashing of the waves.

"This was my favorite spot as a kid," Danny explained. "I knew I could come here to get away from my parents, Jazz, literally everyone. Tuck and I even used it as a secret hide-out for a few years." It was a fond memory, but he grimaced at the part his absent best friend played in it.

"Nice," said Sam. "This is perfect."

Danny turned to look out at the Atlantic Ocean, the same scene he had seen his entire life. The water was deep turquoise under the afternoon sun, and lines of waves tumbled, white with foam. He inhaled, and the air was crisp, sharp with the smell of the sea.

He could feel the familiar ache deep within his chest. Despite knowing what lurked under the surface, and furthermore the risks that floated above it, Danny was struck once again by the overwhelming urge to run out into the surf and swim for as far as his fins would take him.

He swallowed heavily and squashed that desire. He needed to focus.

"So, what's our plan for today?" asked Sam, appearing at his side. She placed her hands on her hips and surveyed the ocean like a pioneer.

"I want to practice my aquapa- my _hydrokinesis_ ," he corrected himself, remembering the word Vlad had used for it. "Just being able to move water isn't enough. I need to be able to attack with it."

"You've fought things before. What can you do with it so far?"

Danny frowned, considering. He counted off the skills he had discovered on his fingers: "I've made a spear with it, but only once. I can push a bunch of water in a wave, which is kind of strong but takes a lot of energy. I think I made a shield with it once, too. Besides that, the most I can do is practice geometry. What I _want_ to do is make those water tentacles Vlad was using, or like a water whip or something."

"Alright." Sam clapped her hands together. "Let's get started. What do you need to do first?"

"First, I should get into 'water mode'," he said. At her raised eyebrows, he explained, "It's like this state of mind where I feel hypersensitive to water – well, more than I already do. The better I can feel the water, the better I can control it."

Danny kicked off his shoes, pulled his socks off, and rolled up his pant-legs. He walked across to where the sand was damp enough to be well-packed but far enough from the onrush of the waves. He had no intention of transforming today – not in front of Sam; that would just feel too weird – but something told him that having the beach under his feet was a good idea.

Taking a deep breath, Danny closed his eyes and let his attention fan away from him, across and into the sea. At first he forgot to check himself, and he was staggered beneath the massive amount of water out there, teeming with organisms. He rapidly reined his mind back in, until the most he could feel was the little patch of sand and water surrounding him and Sam. Their heartbeats thudded loudly in his ears. Sam's was faster than normal, and Danny figured she was anticipating seeing his powers; 'Triton' had hardly ever used them around her. When he opened his eyes again, the waves were sharp in his sight, and he knew before it happened to step back when a larger than average wave swept over the sand.

"Okay," he said softly. "Water mode – check." Experimentally, he raised a hand and a tendril of seawater leaped eagerly toward it. It orbited his outstretched hand in a loosely formed ring, small globules drifting off of it and attaching again a second later.

Danny took this and willed it into the air above his head. He guided it with two hands and stretched it into an arch. Glittering in the sunlight, it looked as if someone had swept a paintbrush across the air. This he led through a series of motions, commanding it to twist and turn like some living creature, spiraling and unwinding.

Sam, who had been silently observing until now, suddenly spoke up. "I have an idea! Hang on."

Danny, half his attention on keeping the water suspended, watched her kneel and pull a huge steel water bottle from her backpack. She dumped out its contents and then filled it to the brim with sand. Then she grabbed a flat slab of rock from over by the cave, plopped it into the sand about ten feet from Danny, and placed the weighted-down bottle on top of it.

"See if you can knock this over using your powers," she said, grinning. Her eyes seemed to be twinkling with enthusiasm.

Danny nodded. He focused on condensing the water so bits of it would stop drifting away. Then he dragged it to the left and swiped his arm sharply to the right. The water crashed against the bottle – and did nothing except drench Sam, who was still standing nearby it.

He lowered his arms and smiled sheepishly. "Oops."

"Don't worry about it!" said Sam, even though her jeans from the knee down were thoroughly soaked. "Just let me get out of the way next time." She backed up to a safe distance and bent to unlace her wet boots.

Danny pulled more water from the sea and tried again. The bottle didn't even budge.

"Maybe you need more water?" Sam suggested.

So, Danny tried again, with about twice as much water as before. This time, the bottle scooted about a centimeter to the right. He tried three more times, and the result was never better, until on the seventh try he was clawing his hand through the air and growling with frustration, and still nothing happened.

"I don't get it!" he said. "Why isn't this working?"

"Hey, chill! Getting mad's not going to magically make it start."

He sighed. "Yeah, I know…"

Sam appeared in front of him and grabbed his hands. "Let's sit down for a second."

"Um, okay?" Danny let the girl pull him down to the sand, where they sat cross-legged and barefoot across from each other.

Sam peered into his face with her lilac eyes and a steady expression. "We're going to try meditation."

Danny raised an incredulous brow. "You mean like saying 'om'?"

She rolled her eyes. "Not unless you want to. Otherwise, it's not necessary. Right now, just close your eyes." Still feeling doubtful, Danny did as she instructed. "Now, focus on breathing. Take deep breaths through your nose, into your stomach, and then out through your mouth."

For a moment, they sat there facing each other and breathing. Danny finally cracked open an eye and said, "Is this supposed to be doing something?"

"We're calming your mind – trust me, you need it. Keep breathing, and just think about your breaths. Don't think about Vlad, don't think about your powers, don't think about me. Just breathe."

Danny shifted a little, laying his hands loosely in his lap, and returned to breathing. He kept expecting something to happen, and for a while he felt as frustrated and as impatient as he did while trying to knock over the bottle. But then, against her instructions, he thought about Sam sitting across from him, sacrificing her own time to help him. He could hear her heart, calm and constant, and her breaths steady, in through her nose and out through her mouth. The water pushed at his back and pulled away, and pushed, and pulled.

Somehow, before he realized it happening not only Danny's breaths but also his own heartbeat had synced up to Sam's.

After a few minutes had passed, Sam said, " _Now_ , think about your powers. What exactly do you want the water to do?"

He thought about it. He needed it to knock the bottle over. The question was, _how_? So far, just hitting the bottle with the water wasn't enough. The water needed to be harder, more solid. But water _wasn't_ solid. That was why it was water. The very idea of solid water was too contradictory to make sense, but the merfolk and Vlad had done it anyway. Heck, even Danny had made a shield strong enough to block a rampaging mud monster.

Danny peeked open his eyes. He pulled a small amount of water into his hand and formed a globe. Then he closed his fingers around it.

At first, the water slid between his fingers; seeing this, Danny had the beginnings of a hunch. Maybe the only reason the water was moving when it hit things – or things hit it – was because he was expecting it to behave like water and flow around. He opened his hand again and reformed the sphere. When he closed his fingers the next time, he focused on not letting the water budge. And his fingers met resistance. He squeezed harder, and it was like gripping a ball.

That was it.

"Hey, Sam," he said.

Without opening her eyes, Sam said, "Yeah?"

"Watch this." As soon as she looked up, Danny opened his hand and the ball of water unwound. It swam through the air and crashed into the bottle, knocking it clean off of the rock. There was no splash this time, and Danny was even able to pull the water back to him, where it spiraled again into a sphere.

"Yes! You did it!" cheered Sam. "See? And _that's_ the power of good breathing."

* * *

Another thirty minutes later, Danny was exhausted but overall pleased. He had gotten to where he could not only knock the bottle over every time but had also managed to wrap the water around it and lift it into the air. And he couldn't have done it without Sam.

As they rounded the corner of the cliff back onto Fentonworks Beach, Danny halted in his tracks and groaned.

His family, all three of them, were on the beach with trash bags, cleaning. His parents spotted him immediately and began waving energetically in his direction. Swapping a glance with Sam, Danny decided to get it over with. He trudged up to his parents, hoping they wouldn't say anything to totally embarrass him.

"Danny!" exclaimed his dad, holding out a plastic garbage bag. "There you are, kiddo. Here, grab a bag and start putting something in it. We're going to make this Beach so clean you could eat off of it! Well, as long as you like the taste of sand. Guess it has lots of calcium, but-"

" _Jack_ ," said his mom, elbowing her husband and looking very pointedly at Sam.

"Oh! I see you have a girl with you!" He thrust another plastic bag toward Sam. "Good. She can help, too!"

"Hi, sweetie," said Danny's mom, reaching a hand out to shake Sam's. "I didn't know Danny was dating anyone!"

"Mom!" Danny cried, turning bright red. "We're not dating! She's just – she's just my friend, okay?"

Sam smiled through her own blush and took his mom's hand. "Hi, I'm Sam. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Fenton."

"You don't really have to help us if you don't want to," his mom assured Sam. "It's just Vlad's cleaning crew is dragging their feet and the food's starting to rot… So we decided to make a family event out of it!"

"Am I supposed to be enjoying this?" grumbled Jazz, stabbing a plastic cup with a repurposed Fenton Harpoon and stuffing it into a garbage bag.

"It's a bonding experience!" said her mom. "We're taking a bad situation and making the most of it, but most importantly we're doing it together."

"I don't mind helping," said Sam, before Danny could take his mom's out.

"You – you don't?" said Danny, with altogether less enthusiasm.

"It's like volunteer work. Right now, this beach is a complete hazard to the environment." She patted Danny on the shoulder and smiled. "Let's do a good thing." To his parents, "Can I get a harpoon, too?"

"Yeah, we've got plenty!" said Danny's dad, before leading her away to have her choice of Fenton stabbing utensil.

Danny's mom winked obviously at him. "She's a keeper, hon."

"Please don't do that."

Chuckling, his mom passed her own Harpoon to Danny and indicated that he should start working.

Reluctantly, Danny began to spear some of the errant hors d'oeuvres, which were soggy and looking a bit greener than he remembered them being on Saturday. He gagged and pressed a fist over his mouth. He hadn't realized how bad this had gotten.

Sam rejoined him a couple of minutes later, with her own extra-sharp Fenton Harpoon. "Your family seems nice," she said and stabbed some garbage with no small amount of pleasure. "Do they always let you guys handle weapons?"

Danny shrugged. "Welcome to Fentonworks."

* * *

It hadn't been 'fun', per se, but having Sam there to help clean up the Beach made the time pass a lot more quickly. They had finished the worst of it by the time the sun set, and Sam's chauffeur – "You have a chauffeur?" – had been able to pick her up at the front of the house above. That made Sam the second outsider to ever step inside the Fentonworks lab, having had to cross through it to get to the elevator.

To say she was impressed would have been putting it lightly. "Your parents built all of this?" she exclaimed upon seeing the high-tech gadgetry, aquariums, computers, and so on that crowded the space, all themed with the signature silver and green colors of the Fentonworks brand.

"Basically. DALV Corp supplies all of their materials, but everything else they designed and built themselves. Everything a person could need to hunt merfolk. Like this gun that shoots razor-sharp harpoons. Or this gun that electrocutes merpeople. And this net that they supposedly can't break out of. That in the middle is a merperson holding tank. Oh yeah, and who could forget the Fenton _Bazooka?_ "

"I get the feeling you're not very comfortable in here."

"How could you tell?"

"Come on, Danny!" called his dad, already near the elevator. "This lab is top secret, and the less your friend sees of it the better!"

Danny was more than happy to usher Sam out of there.

His family's interference aside, Danny had had a really good day.

Even without Tucker.

_And there goes that happy feeling._ Upstairs in his bedroom, he checked his phone – new, since he and a bunch of other people had either lost their phones or had gotten irreparable water damage that weekend – and, no surprise, there were no new messages.

He frowned at the little device and considered calling Tuck, _again_. He had already left several voicemail and dozens of texts, and Tucker hadn't responded to a single one of them. Some of the messages even showed 'unread' next to them. Tucker was ignoring him.

Frustrated, Danny decided to go take a shower and try to get that lingering feeling of 'just having picked up a beach's worth of garbage' off of him.

He was no longer doing secretive sponge baths in the middle of the night, not since he had figured out how to dry himself off with his powers and gotten over his fear of his family walking in on him. He still couldn't take a normal shower, but it was much better than before.

Danny stripped out of his clothes and stood at the side of the tub. After the water heated up, he grabbed the shower nozzle off of its hanger on the wall and, holding his head over the basin, wetted and shampooed it. That done, he switched from the shower nozzle to the faucet and used a scrub sponge to clean the rest of his body.

As he was wrapping up, something caught his eye in the bottom of the bathtub. There was some small, dark… thing… wriggling around on the porcelain and struggling to not be washed away into the drain. He narrowed his eyes at it and leaned down to get a better look.

It looked kind of like a worm, except it was black, white, and stripy, not much longer than the first joint of his finger. The body was thin, the middle slightly fatter, and it had a sucker on each end that it was attempting to use to attach itself to the tub.

Danny made a disgusted face. He recognized this. It was a leech - a zebra leech to be precise. The species had its own little habitat down in the lab, and he had thought a parasite that ate only zebras was awesome when he was a kid, back before he learned that wasn't what the name meant.

Just what it was doing in the upstairs bathtub, he had no idea. He decided to use his hydrokinesis to help it on its way. With a distressed jerk, it popped off of the bathtub and disappeared down the drain.

If that never happened again, it would be too soon. Danny hated leeches. He did a quick check of his skin and hair to make sure the creature had been alone. Just the idea of one attaching to him, feasting on his blood, made him shudder. It didn't matter if they were tiny. That was just sick.

Satisfied, Danny dried off and headed back to his room for homework and finally bed. Lying down, his eyes fell on his phone again, that unpleasant reminder. He would have to talk to Tuck tomorrow, _make_ Tucker listen to his apology and accept it. And if he didn't, well… Danny would just keep trying, because Fentons were stubborn, and he'd had enough. He'd make Tucker see reason, and he wouldn't stop until he did.


	22. Chapter 22

" _Why should any one be frightened by a hat?"_

\- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in _The Little Prince_

* * *

Neptune High was kind of strange on Wednesday.

To start with, a lot of people were wearing hats.

Now fashion crazes happened. Danny remembered a time in eighth grade when all of the students at his junior high school had wanted to wear neon – clothes, nail polish, eye shadow, lipstick, even their hair was striped with shades of yellow, orange, green, and pink so bright it made Danny's eyes hurt to look at it.

But those crazes took time. Today it felt like everyone had on some unspoken cue grabbed the nearest thing that would fit on their head. Baseball caps, beanies, cowboy hats, scarves. Football players were wearing helmets indoors, the anime fanatics were wearing furry hoods with animal ears, and the tabletop nerds had donned their orc caps and elf wigs. Even Mr. Lancer, undeniably one of the least 'hip' people Danny knew, was wearing a French beret.

"Did we miss something?" Danny asked Sam after getting to his desk. To his relief, her head was swim-cap free, unlike several other members of her team.

"National Hat Day?" she suggested, offering a perplexed shrug.

"I must not've gotten the memo."

Something else was weird. It wasn't just the hats. Danny noticed it more and more as the day went on, that anyone sporting a head covering was acting a little… off. The jocks weren't bashing the geeks with as much vigor, the cheerleaders weren't being quite so spiteful, and Lancer's normally droning voice droned on more than usual.

These washed-out versions of his classmates and teachers were reminding Danny of zombies – and Danny knew a lot about zombies, having killed endless hordes of them in his free time. So that could have accounted, perhaps, for the buzz of unease he had felt since walking through the doors of the school that morning.

Then again, he might have been imagining it. He was also preoccupied about his eventual confrontation with Tucker, and that surely was doing nothing for his nerves.

On the one hand, he knew Tuck was being unreasonable. On the other, he knew that if Tucker didn't accept his apology, this three-day span of not speaking to each other could turn into three weeks, into three months, into three _decades_.

An image of Tucker as a cantankerous, cane-wielding, grudge-bearing old man, waving said cane at an equally decrepit Danny, rose out of his brain. He frantically shook it away.

His apology needed to be good. Any outcome other than forgiveness would be unacceptable.

He planned carefully how to ambush Tucker with Sam at lunch: "We'll wait until he leaves school and then follow him home. No, wait – we'll leave first and beat him home and intercept him before he can make it through the door."

"For an apology, this is sounding increasingly violent. What's next? Are we going to put a bag over his head and stuff him in the trunk of a car?"

"That probably won't be necessary… but let's have your chauffeur nearby just in case."

Danny glanced, again, for the tenth time that lunch period, at the table where Tucker was continuing to take refuge from him. Tuck hadn't donned the ceremonial robes of a Fifth-Tier Elemental Wizard or anything like that (not like several of his tablemates), so he hadn't been _completely_ converted. But he seemed impervious to Danny's penetrating stares; not once did he turn to look back.

Danny spent the rest of the afternoon rehearsing what he was going to say. As soon as the final bell rang, he dashed out of Spanish class and found Sam already waiting for him on the steps of Neptune High. She would be accompanying him for moral support and also as concrete evidence of both her harmlessness and trustworthy nature. Then, if against all odds Danny's apology failed, they could go down to the beach together where Danny would let out his frustration by trying to carve a hole into the side of the cliff with his hydrokinesis.

To make it seem less like an ambush, they had decided Danny should 'casually' approach Tucker at the halfway point between school and home. So there Danny stood at the corner of Aster and Palmetto, wringing his hands and pacing, sending constant glances toward Neptune High, while Sam scolded him and told him to relax.

Finally, the technophile came in sight. Danny swallowed, squared his shoulders, clenched his fists at his sides, readied his speech on the tip of his tongue –

And Tucker walked past him, without even looking at him.

Danny's readiness deflated like a sad balloon animal. Off-balance, he went ahead with his apology. "Tucker. C'mon, Tuck, just – just listen for a minute, okay?"

This time, Tucker paused. His back was turned to Danny, but at least he seemed to be listening.

Danny took a deep breath and plunged in. "Look, Tuck, I know you're mad at me, and I get it. I shouldn't have lied to you about meeting Sam at the pool. I knew you wouldn't like it, and so I didn't tell you. That was wrong, and I'm really sorry. And… geez, Tuck, I can't stand us not talking to each other! Sam knows everything now, and she's not going to tell anyone, so can't we all just make up and be friends?"

It wasn't quite as eloquent as he had planned it to be, but Danny hoped what it lacked in substance could be made up for by its spontaneous feeling. He stood, holding his breath and waiting for his friend's response.

Tucker kept walking.

"Tucker!" Danny lunged forward and grabbed the other boy's arm, spinning him around. He was greeted by a cold, blank expression, like Danny was a stranger. Danny hadn't realized to what extent Tucker's anger had stretched. "Can't we talk about this? What do you want me to do? Tell me, and I'll do it."

Tucker shrugged out of Danny's grasp. "Just leave me alone," he mumbled, and he turned to leave.

Contrary to what Danny had promised only seconds earlier, he wasn't about to leave Tucker alone. He reached out and grabbed Tucker again, just before a dangerous shiver crawled over his own skin, and –

_smack!_

Pain bloomed on the left side of Danny's face, and he stumbled backward. Blinking the stars out of his eyes, Danny gaped at his best friend, who was lowering his hand and flexing his fingers, expression unwaveringly cold.

Tucker had hit him. _Tucker_ had hit him.

"Did you just punch me?" demanded Danny. As if in answer, Tucker adjusted his stance and held his fists at his hips, looking for all the world like he was ready for a fistfight.

"Hit him back!" encouraged Sam from the sidelines.

"I'm not going to hit him!" exclaimed Danny. He thrust his hands toward the boy: "He's Tucker!" Before he could say more, Tucker ran forward, swinging his right fist in for another encounter with Danny's face.

Danny ducked the blow and backed away, holding his hands up, palms out, in a placating gesture. "Now, Tuck, I know you're angry, but don't you think this is-" he dodged another swing "- a little extreme?" Tucker punched again. "Apparently not."

He couldn't understand it. Danny had known Tucker for almost his entire life, and regardless of the butt-kicking he could deliver in Doomed, Tucker was about the most harmless person Danny had ever met. He would never take out his anger on someone by attacking them.

_I'm just glad Tuck sucks at gym._ Whatever rage had come over him, it hadn't made the tech geek any more physically adept, and even Danny, equally terrible at things like running or jumping or throwing a ball, was able to avoid his punches.

"I hate to do this," said Danny, ducking another swing. "But you leave me no choice." Saying that, Danny bent his knees, lowered his head, and tackled Tucker, knocking him down into the grass next to the sidewalk. He sat up and pinned Tuck under him, holding the other boy's arms down to the ground. "Help me hold him!" he told Sam.

She was at their side in a second, but instead of helping Danny secure Tucker, Sam just there stood and stared. "Um, Danny? We might have a problem."

Danny looked to her and then followed her pointing finger back to Tucker's head.

In the scuffle, Tucker's red hat, the one he always wore, the one he sometimes slept in – and Danny suspected Tucker even showered in it – had fallen off of his head onto the ground. What Danny saw underneath had him yelling and springing backward.

Clinging to Tucker's head, their suckers hidden in his short curly hair, were two unnaturally large zebra leeches, each one about three inches long. Their fat, larval bodies pulsed and undulated in the open air. Tucker seemed oblivious to them and was calmly climbing to his feet and replacing the red beret, expressionless all the while.

"Might?" squeaked Danny. "In what universe would this not be a problem?"

"It was a figure of speech!" snapped Sam, warily eyeing the leech-ridden boy.

"What do we do?"

"You still against hitting him?"

"Less than before!" said Danny, and he jumped out of the way as Tucker attacked again. "We've got to get those things off of him!"

"Tackle him again!" ordered Sam.

Steeling his nerves, Danny waited until Tucker rushed at him, dodging the geek like a matador dodges a bull, and then jumped on him from behind, knocking him back into the grass. Tucker thrashed underneath him, but Danny was sitting on the small of Tuck's back and had the boy's arms pinned with his knees.

He snatched the hat off of Tucker's head and tossed it to the side. Then he stared, disgusted, at the creatures taking up residence on his friend's head. His parents had taught him how to remove leeches, but seeing as how until recently Danny had never set foot in the water, he'd never had a reason to use their lessons.

"We can't just pull them off," he told Sam. "You're supposed to slide your fingernail under their suckers and make them let go on their own." Danny knew this, but he couldn't bring himself to touch them.

"Okay," said Sam slowly. "So, what are you waiting for?"

"I…" Danny raised a hand, and it froze hovering over the back of Tuck's head.

"Oh please," said Sam, dropping to her knees in the grass. "Don't tell me you can fight a giant octopus, a mutant, and Plasmius, but you're afraid of leeches." Without hesitation, she applied her nails to each leech, and as soon as they withdrew their proboscises, she flicked them off into the grass, where they lay thrashing and squirming.

Danny felt Tucker fall limp underneath him. Cautiously, he got off of his friend, and when he looked closer, he realized Tuck was unconscious.

Sam was trying to scoop the leeches into Tucker's beret.

"What are you doing?" exclaimed Danny, grabbing the hat from her. Tuck's hat was a sacred object, and if the tech geek found out Sam had used it as a leech tote bag, he would never accept her as a friend. "Not in the hat!"

"What? They were basically in there before. I was just putting them back."

"Just… not in the hat." Danny rolled Tucker over and stared pensively into his face. Where the leeches had been attached, his head was bleeding steadily in two thin streams, and there was a grass stain on his chin from where he had landed.

"Ah, Tuck…" whispered Danny.

* * *

They took Tucker to Danny's house. Sam's chauffeur had, in fact, been on standby and was able to provide them easy transport. (He had also had a convenient if somewhat mysterious stash of plastic baggies in his glovebox that were the perfect size for carrying leeches.) If he wondered why they were taking both leeches and an unconscious, bleeding classmate to Fentonworks, he didn't say. Danny guessed the man was paid to not ask questions.

At Fentonworks, the living room was empty, and Sam and Danny were able to carry Tucker upstairs with no one the wiser. They took him into Danny's bedroom, which Danny briefly lamented not having cleaned better, and laid the boy on Danny's bed.

Thus followed a period of awkward silence, in which Danny sat stiff in his computer chair looking between the unconscious Tucker and the pretty girl walking around his bedroom scrutinizing his belongings. She didn't say a word, and when she had seen enough, she sat on the end of the bed at Tucker's feet and said, "I guess we know why everyone was wearing a hat today."

Tucker wearing his beret was so ordinary that Danny honestly hadn't made the connection. Now, imagining the bulbous, wriggling, bloodsucking parasites that might be hiding beneath all of those hats and hoods and fantasy-themed wigs, Danny thought he might faint. At the very least, he would probably skip dinner that night.

"It's Plasmius," he grumbled.

"Obviously," said Sam. "The question is, what's he planning to do with them?"

Danny worked his jaw, staring at Tucker. "Maybe Tuck'll be able to tell us something."

It took more than an hour for Tucker to wake up. In the meantime, Sam suggested they try to get some homework done. Danny made the effort – kind of – but with an epidemic of leeches turning the residents of Amity Beach into violent zombie people, it was hard to concentrate on geometry. When Tucker finally groaned and shifted on the bed, Danny practically flew to his side.

"Tuck!" he said. "Are you okay?"

"Nnn… Danny?" Tucker mumbled. He looked blearily at his surroundings. "Why am I in your room?"

Sam appeared at his other side, holding up the Ziploc bag with the two giant, sluggishly wriggling zebra leeches inside. "Recognize these?"

Tucker frowned at the bag, and then his eyes grew wide. His hands flew to the top of his head and with a strangled cry he kicked himself up into a sitting position against the headboard.

Sam nodded, looking satisfied. "Survey says, recognized."

"Get those things out of here!" scolded Danny. He looked back to the other boy and smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, Tuck…"

"So all that… was real?" said Tucker. He lowered his hands and stared at the flakes of dried blood on his palms.

"Do you remember what happened?" asked Danny.

"Yeah. I remember everything." Tucker studied his knees with a puzzled, astonished expression as he explained. "I mean, I woke up this morning, and when I looked in the mirror I saw them on my head, but I don't remember thinking it was weird or anything. I just got dressed and went to school. But, I felt… I don't know, kind of detached from myself. I was saying things and doing things I think I would do, but I don't remember deciding to do them, like I was sitting back and watching someone else live my life. Then, when you tried to talk to me…" His eyes flicked up to Danny's face, and he winced. "Sorry I punched you, man."

Danny automatically massaged his cheek, and he could tell it was bruised. "Just be happy you're a horrible shot," he teased.

"What _happened_ to me?"

"Plasmius is clearly up to something," Sam explained. "We were hoping you could help us figure it out."

Tucker glanced at Sam, as if only now realizing she was there, and he stiffened. He turned back to Danny and said, solemnly, "I heard what you said, too."

"Ah…" Danny chuckled nervously and rubbed the back of his neck. "At least that's not the reason you punched me."

"It was a lousy apology, dude."

"Oh."

"You know she's not the reason I'm mad at you, right?"

Danny winced. "She's not?" _Told you_ , that annoying voice in the back of his head gloated.

"Did nothing I said get through to you?" asked Tucker, frowning.

"Is this really the best time to do this?" Sam interjected, looking distinctly uncomfortable to watch Danny get chewed out again.

Although Danny wasn't exactly comfortable either, if Tucker felt like talking about his feelings instead of talking about zombie mind-control leeches, he probably shouldn't object. "Er, why not? We basically knocked him out and kidnapped him. Besides the leeches, this was all according to plan."

"Wait, what?" said Tucker.

"Never mind," said Danny. "Tuck, I want to apologize to you. I want to make this right. So, can you just tell me why you're mad?"

Tucker bowed his head, and Danny thought that, less than angry, his friend looked let down. "Just think about it, Danny. You're my best friend – you're my _only_ friend. We share everything, and we always have. And I've been in with you on this whole merperson thing since the beginning. I was even there the first time you changed! But then you start keeping secrets from me, doing things behind my back? How is that supposed to make me feel?"

"Tuck-"

The other boy held up a hand. "Hold on, I'm not finished. You know how that makes me feel? Like you don't trust me. And I can't understand why that is, what I did to make you suddenly stop trusting me. Like I said, I've been trying really, really hard to help you, and I thought we had gotten past all of the secrets and withholding information business. But then I learn you _still_ don't trust me. How do you explain that?"

Tucker took a deep breath, let it out, and then nodded to Danny. "Okay. _Now_ it's your turn."

Danny frowned and let his eyes rove about room. He'd changed his mind; he'd have rather talked about the leeches. "Tuck," he finally said, eyes fastened to the styrofoam Mars dangling in his solar system mobile. "It's not that I don't trust you. I trust you more than anybody. If I lied to you, it's only because I was lying to myself first. So, I'll – I'll try to explain."

He looked at the others, Tucker who was waiting sternly, and Sam who looked like she was torn between staying in the room and making her exit. They were both a part of this now, and Danny needed to stop keeping things from both of them. He nodded to Sam, signalling that she should hear this. Then, he swallowed and walked back to his computer chair, sitting down so it would feel less like he was in a spotlight. It kind of helped, but not much.

"Since this happened to me," he began. "… At first I thought it was just my body, you know? Get splashed, grow fins. But it's not. Something about me, inside of me, is changing, too." He saw the hardness leave Tuck's face and his eyebrows rise in curiosity. "I…" It was hard to get the words out. "I keep dreaming about it every night. Being in the ocean. And when I wake up, it feels strange to realize I have two legs. And I really miss… the freedom of… When I went up against Vlad the other night, even though it was terrible and terrifying, it was the first time I'd been back in the ocean since going to find Kaima, and…"

He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths through his nose.

"I guess I was getting used to it, but then Vlad told me what he had to do to become half merperson. Guys, he said he ate another merman's still-beating heart. He said it was like eating their soul. Since he did that, he got all of the powers that merman had. I think…" Danny wrapped his arms across his chest and squeezed his T-shirt in his fists to steady himself. "What if that's what I did? What if whatever this is I've got inside of me is someone else's _soul_?"

He swallowed thickly. "I don't even know how I feel about that. I don't know what to think. Every time I _do_ think about it, I get so freaked out that… So, I guess I've just been pretending that none of that is real. Every new power I get, every time I feel something weird, I just want to ignore it. Same with Sam, I think. I knew that her – I knew that you," he amended, opening his eyes and turning to Sam, "seeing my merhalf was a disaster waiting to happen, but I felt like if I pretended it wasn't, that if I didn't even admit I was meeting with her, it could continue like nothing was wrong.

"I think that makes me a huge coward. And so, I'm sorry it felt like I betrayed you, Tuck."

His friends' features rested somewhere between shock, horror, and pity. Tucker took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut tight. "Now _I_ feel like the jerk," he muttered. "Dude, I had no idea."

"How could you have?" said Sam. "Danny, you've been keeping that bottled up inside you this whole time?"

Danny nodded mutely, dropping his eyes to the carpet.

"Well, thanks for telling us," said Tucker, after a moment. "I don't know what to say about any of that, but thanks for telling us about it anyway." He glanced to Sam. "I guess neither of us can really know what you're going through. It doesn't sound like you know for sure, either. But, I'm here for you, man, and I want to help you get to the bottom of it, no matter what _it_ is. So." Tucker stood and came around to sit at the end of the bed, where he held out his hand. "Apology accepted."

Danny tried to smile as he took the hand and shook it. "Thanks, Tuck."

He looked into the faces of his friends. Where he had been expecting to see rejection, if not revulsion, about the things he had revealed, he saw nothing but support in their kind and encouraging smiles. And he realized that, for the first time both of his friends were together in one place, and they were finally on good terms. With them at his side, suddenly everything seemed a lot less horrifying.

"But there's still one thing I'm wondering about," said Tucker, frowning again.

"Sure," said Danny. "What's up?"

Leaning forward, Tucker narrowed his eyes and said, "You're not going around hitting on other pretty girls in this 'Triton' persona, are you?"

"Wha… No!" Danny quickly objected. "Just Sam." His wide eyes flew to the girl, and he backtracked. "Not that you're pretty or anything. I mean, well, you are- and I wasn't hitting on you! Not that I wouldn't, but-"

Sam raised an amused brow and drawled, "Yeah, you should just stop talking now."

Tuck leaned back and crossed his arms, nodding his satisfaction. "Okay. Good," he said. "Because next time, I want in on it!"

"Uh, what?"

Grinning, Tucker explained, "We've struck gold, man! Sure, your mer-half is really creepy, with its scales and pasty white skin and glowing green eyes, but that wasn't a turn-off for Sam, so I bet there's tons of other girls out there who are into that!"

"I'm not 'into' anything," said Sam. "Besides, he's not creepy!"

"See what I mean, D?" said Tucker. "You fish up, take me as your finman, and we'll have girlfriends in no time!"

"Finman?" asked Danny.

Tucker shrugged. "It seemed more appropriate than wingman."

Danny rolled his eyes and smiled, for real this time. "It's good to have you back, Tuck," he said, extending his hand again.

Tucker took it and shook it vigorously. "Man, it's good to be back! I almost got roped into spending my whole weekend in Nathan's basement! At least when you and me partake in nerdy pastimes, we do it above ground. Also, can we please get back to the fact that I just spent the whole day reenacting _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_?"

"Nice movie reference," Sam complimented.

Tucker smirked. "That one was easy." Running a hand over his head, he added, "But it doesn't make it any less awful."

Danny crossed his arms thoughtfully and frowned. "I found one of those in my bathtub last night," he admitted.

"And you didn't think that was weird?" asked Tucker, incredulous.

"What?" protested Danny. "You've seen the inside of our fridge. I thought it was my parents'! Besides, it was tiny, not like the ones we pulled off your head. Another size-shifting mutant, I guess," he huffed.

"What that's about the inside of the fridge?" asked Sam.

"Trust me," replied Tucker, "you don't want to know." Back to Danny, he said, "So you mean to tell me, not only has my toilet been compromised, but now my shower, too?"

"Looks like," said Danny.

"Guess I won't be showering ever again," Tucker grumbled. "Why does this thing between you and Vlad have to be so unhygienic?"

"So, the leeches are starting out tiny and coming out of people's baths and showers," Sam surmised, smiling grimly. "They attach to people's heads, become monster-sized and exert some sort of mind control over their victims. Then, so no one who's not been infected notices, the leeches compel the hosts to wear hats."

"I guess it's a safe bet that anyone wearing a hat's been leeched," said Danny. He turned to Tucker. "You wouldn't mind doing without for a few days?"

"Or maybe we should all wear hats?" suggested Tucker. "That way, the leeched people don't suspect that we're not leeched. We can go in undercover."

Danny exchanged a look with Sam. She shrugged. "Makes sense."

"I just don't understand why Vlad's doing this," said Danny. "What does he get from attaching leeches to all of Amity Beach? Tuck, did you get any impression or clues?"

"Not really," said Tucker. "But I got pretty violent earlier. Maybe he's going to have the whole town turn into a mob and attack you?"

Danny paled. "If that's true, I think I might never leave my house again."

Sam shook her head. "No, I don't think that's it," she said. "Based on what Danny's told me, Vlad Masters seems a lot sneakier than that. And if killing Danny was his goal, he could just do it himself. Danny doesn't stand a chance against him."

"Thanks for the ringing endorsement, Sam," said Danny weakly.

The girl winced. "Ah. Sorry."

"No, you're right." He sighed. "I _don't_ stand a chance. Whatever he's planning, I don't think he wants to kill me. What if I'm not even his target this time?"

"This dude has _way_ too many irons in the fire," said Tucker. "Killing Danny's dad, marrying his mom, wiping out the Merfolk, and probably enslaving all humanity with his legion of people-eaters. And who knows what _else_ he's up to?"

"Well, whatever it is," said Sam, "we have to figure it out, soon, before someone gets hurt."

"Figure it out," Danny agreed, "and stop it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on Danny's transformation: 
> 
> The transformation is an outward-in process. That's why the bones and muscles in his legs aren't going to change so much until his skin does, which prevents a horrible and grotesque accident from happening if he starts transforming with pants on. There's also a factor of how much water he touches. For example, his teeth and eyes probably aren't going to change, or change much, unless most of his head is wet. As for his gills and lungs, yes, when his neck gets wet (again, with a significant amount of water) it triggers the gill transition. This causes something of a domino effect. His gills signal his trachea to close, converting his lungs into a kind of swim bladder that contributes to his buoyancy underwater. Danny can consciously override this and can open and close his airway as needed. While transformed, his lungs and gills can process oxygen equally well.
> 
> If water were to touch the skin over a major artery like you propose, probably his body's method of thermoregulation wouldn't be affected. I did some research (using the ever-reliable Wikipedia). Here's what I learned:
> 
> It seems warm-blooded organisms (endotherms) are able to generate heat and maintain higher temperatures than their environments through the energy produced by their bodies' metabolic processes, like processing fats and sugars, while ectotherms (cold-blooded organisms) take their heat from external sources, for example, basking in the sunlight. So, despite being called 'warm-blooded' and 'cold-blooded', these processes are not really directly connected to the blood. Plus, many ectotherms will keep the same body temperature as endotherms anyway because they try to live in warm places.
> 
> Fish, however, are not only ectothermic organisms but also poikilothermic, meaning their internal temperatures can fluctuate based on external temperatures. Let's extend this to merpeople and say that their body temperatures would change to match the temperature of the surrounding water, whether warm or cold, with no ill consequences.
> 
> Let's also say that Danny's thermoregulation is one of the last things to be affected in his transformation, meaning that he wouldn't switch from being an endotherm to being a poikilotherm until he is completely submerged in water and his transformation complete. Then, as he transitions back to human, his body temperature would adjust as needed as his metabolic processes take over the task of his thermoregulation.
> 
> Danny, while being a freak of nature, has a body that is suited for him to live without being in danger of suddenly experiencing vast amounts of pain and/or death. Thank goodness.
> 
> Currently, there are no other side effects that show up in his human form besides his sensitivity to water and the 'fishy sense'. But. That may not always be true.
> 
> Anyway, let's all keep pondering Danny's half-mer anatomy. But let's also not take it too seriously. I'm going to take a moment to quote one of my favorite guys, Stan Lee, on the science of superheroes:
> 
> "I am the least scientific person you'll ever know. So I try to seem scientific with our characters, for example when the – when Spiderman became Spiderman, had him bitten by a radioactive spider, I thought that sounded very logical and believable and scientific.
> 
> "I had the Hulk. He was inundated by gamma rays; that's how he became the Hulk. Now, again I thought that sounded good. I wouldn't know a gamma ray if I saw it, I don't know what a gamma ray is but if it sounds good, I'll use it."
> 
> (Hear the rest in "Stan Lee on the 'Science' of Comic Book Superheroes" on YouTube)
> 
> Similarly, I'll try to sound scientific when I can, but half of what I write will probably be bogus. That's what makes this so much fun. ;D


	23. Chapter 23

_Masked, I advanced._

\- René Descartes

* * *

"The town hall meeting."

Danny peeked from under the bill of his baseball cap at Sam, who was setting her school supplies on her desk to his left. Her short hair curled from beneath a charcoal-colored pageboy hat that was really cute on her.

So cute, in fact, that Danny didn't register what she had said. "Wait, what?" Luckily, it couldn't have been all that clear in the first place, because Tucker echoed him a second later.

"The town hall meeting!" repeated Sam. She slid into her seat and hunched over her desk, compelling the others to do the same. In their secretive huddle, she whispered, "That's where it's going down."

"What town hall meeting?" asked Danny, glancing at Tucker. The tech-geek just shrugged.

"The town hall meeting," insisted Sam, as though repeating the words would magically impart understanding on them. "You know, Friday night? Everyone will be there? For a forum about merpeople? You haven't heard about it?"

"No," said Tucker. "How did _you_?"

"It's all my parents are talking about. Or, it _was_ , before they got taken."

"You mean-"

She nodded gravely. "Fresh this morning. Scarved and bowler hatted. How are your parents doing?"

Tucker grimaced. "I think they got my pops, but my mom's still in the clear."

"I kinda haven't seen my parents in a while," Danny admitted. "Not since our 'bonding experience' a couple of days ago." He just hoped they were so busy working in the lab that they were forgetting to do things like shower. They had definitely forgotten to do things like feed their kids. He'd had to order a pizza for Jazz and himself the night before. Because Jazz, well… "But they got my sister."

All three of them cast their eyes about the room. In first period English, not a single student was bareheaded, and the room was eerily quiet. Last night they had talked about trying to remove the leeches from people, but remembering how violent Tucker became, they had decided it was probably safer for everyone to leave them on for now. There were way too many leeched people, and who knew if trying to pull the leeches off would incite an angry mob. Until they figured out what Vlad was planning and to what extent these people were his puppets, it was better to lay low.

Danny shuddered and turned back to Sam. Lowering his voice even more, he asked, "What's this about the town hall?"

"After the attack last weekend," the girl explained, "Mayor Montez decided to hold a forum to reassure everyone about merpeople. I think he was pressured into it by my mother and her Amity Trendsetters. Them, and the other big names who were attacked on Saturday."

"That makes sense," said Danny, although he was still unused to the idea that the rest of the community believed in merpeople.

"But get this," continued Sam. "While the mayor put this together, the three main speakers at the town hall are going to be Jeff Summers from Axion, Danny's parents, and-"

"Let me guess," muttered Danny. "His name starts with 'V' and rhymes with 'bad'."

"Bingo."

There was a beat of silence as the news sank in.

"So?" asked Tucker finally. "Vlad Masters gets all of these leeched people together in one room and, what, reenacts _Fight Club_?"

"I don't know, but that's got to be where it's going to happen," said Sam.

"Sam's right," said Danny, nodding, but then he sighed and massaged his temples. "Except I'm still not sure what _we're_ supposed to do about it."

Sam smiled grimly. "That brings me to the next part. Danny, you-" The bell rang just then, cutting off her words. "Later!"

Lancer stood from his desk, eyes glazed and lifeless. "Quiet down, people," he told the room, even though no one was talking. Then he began to lecture them on the themes in _Fahrenheit 451,_ which at once seemed strange, because Danny was pretty sure they had just started reading _To Kill a Mockingbird_. The teacher's voice was utterly monotonous.

Danny then wondered if the entire day was going to be like this, and if he would end up stabbing pencils into his ears to end the boredom. Maybe Vlad wasn't planning for anyone to become violent and attack each other at all. Maybe his only plan was to torture Danny to death with tedium.

About twenty minutes into class, Lancer trailed off mid-sentence and didn't start again. The bald teacher lowered his gaze to the top of his desk and stared at it, sluggishly blinking every few seconds.

Danny, Sam, and Tucker glanced at each other and glanced about the room. If any of the other students were worried about their teacher running out of batteries, they weren't showing it.

Sam raised her hand. "Um, Mr. Lancer, can we be excused?" There was no response. Turning to the others, she said, "Let's get out of here."

"Can we do that?" said Danny.

"Look at him," said Sam, gesturing to the teacher, who seemed to possess the same amount of intelligence and awareness as a potato. "He doesn't care. Come on!"

Hesitantly, Danny and Tucker stood from their desks, expecting to be reprimanded any second. When it didn't happen, they grabbed their stuff and followed an impatient Sam from the room.

Five minutes later, after collecting their backpacks, the three of them were walking down the front steps of the school, the warm yellow morning sun shining on their heads. It was only nine o'clock.

"I know the whole school's been zombified, so why do I still feel guilty about playing hooky?" asked Tucker. Danny agreed. He was nowhere near as good a student as Tucker, but truancy was on a whole other level than missing assignments.

"Who cares?" said Sam. "We've got work to do. The town hall's tomorrow! So, Danny," she continued, pointing a finger at his chest, "you know you're basically a superhero, right?"

Danny opened his mouth to protest, couldn't find a good argument, and turned to Tucker for help, only to find the technophile grinning smugly.

"Told you, Danny," said Tuck with a helpless shrug that reeked of gratification.

Glowering, Danny conceded, "Fine. What's your point?"

"Well, what do all superheroes need?" asked Sam.

"Um…" He and Tuck looked at each other and offered some guesses:

"A secret lair?"

"A paramedic?"

"A cool car?"

"A hot girlfriend?"

Danny jabbed his elbow into Tucker's stomach for the last one, causing the other boy to double over.

Sam rolled her lilac eyes. "Seriously? I'm talking about a costume!"

His and Tucker's guesses had been much more appealing. Danny immediately had a vision of himself in tights and a cape, and he winced. "I need a costume?"

"Think about it, Danny!" said Sam. "How are you supposed to go to the town hall and protect anyone if you look like Danny Fenton? We need to hide your identity so you can use your powers freely and help people." She pulled her backpack around and rummaged through it, finally extracting a spiral drawing notebook. She opened it to a page in the middle and passed it to Danny, saying, "Lucky for you, I've been thinking about a design."

With no small amount of dread, Danny accepted the notebook. First Tuck had been recording every new development of his powers on his PDA, and now Sam was designing costumes? "I don't know who's worse," he commented, "you or Tucker."

His eyes fell onto the page. It wasn't as bad as he had thought it would be. There wasn't a cape, for one thing, and neither was he wearing his underwear on the outside. Sam had depicted him in something like a jumpsuit with boots and gloves and a small logo on the chest. There seemed to be a belt with water canisters attached to it, and the Danny in the picture was using his hydrokinesis to control their contents. Instead of a mask, she had just drawn his head in merform. _Sam's really good at drawing_ , he thought, looking at the care she had put into the details of his face.

Tucker snatched the notebook out of his hands. "This is perfect! Sam, I'm starting to think you may be a genius. And you know what? This jumpsuit looks suspiciously like-"

"No," said Danny, realizing it immediately. "Don't say it, Tuck. Stop right there."

It was no good. Tucker said it:

"- your Fenton Wetsuit."

* * *

That was how, about ten minutes later, Danny found himself crouching on his bedroom floor and pulling the neoprene monstrosity from under the bed. Sam grabbed it from him and held it up to appraise it. "Tucker was right - this _is_ perfect!"

'Perfect' was not the word Danny would have used. "I don't know, Sam," he hedged. "Won't my parents find it a _teensy_ bit suspicious if the merboy shows up wearing a Fenton Wetsuit? _My_ Fenton Wetsuit?"

"Can we alter it somehow?" asked Sam. "Right now it's entirely black. If we had some different gloves or boots, or if we could attach something to it, we could make it look a lot less like _your_ Wetsuit."

He slumped. "I mean, yeah, there are some spare parts in the lab, but-"

"Then what are we waiting for?" said Sam. She stuffed the suit into her backpack and took the lead to the kitchen elevator.

"Uh, Sam?" said Danny, rushing after her. "The lab is top secret. Not to mention that we're supposed to be in school. Not to mention that my parents are probably in there!"

"Can you get them out?" she asked.

"Er, probably but-"

"Okay then!"

Danny had never realized Sam was so headstrong, what with the distant expression she usually wore in public. She might have been more stubborn than Danny himself, and that was saying something, since Danny was a Fenton and Fentons were renowned for their stubbornness.

Tucker was not exactly leaping to his aid, looking instead more excited about another trip to the Fentonworks lab, so Danny had little choice but to get herded into the elevator. His mind scrabbled for an excuse to tell his parents.

The door slid open at the bottom of the cliff to reveal, unsurprisingly, both of the oldest Fentons hard at work on the Fenton Siren Speeder. Danny was momentarily relieved to find them leechless, but that feeling was quickly replaced by his nervousness and guilt. They looked up at the sudden intrusion of their son and his friends.

"Danny?" said Maddie, sliding back her hood and goggles. "What are you doing home so early?"

"And what are they doing here?" said Jack petulantly, eyeing the other teens; between he and his wife, it was Jack who most treasured the idea of a secret laboratory. "You know the lab's off limits to guests, Danno."

"Uh, yeah," said Danny, rubbing the back of his neck and refusing to meet their eyes. "So… about that, you see…"

"There was a merperson!" said Tucker. Danny looked at him in surprise.

"At the school!" added Sam.

"Uh, yeah!" said Danny. "The guy from the other night. Plasmius!" _Take that, Vlad_.

His parents were already in a flurry, grabbing the nearest weapons and scanners and nets and strapping equipment to every part of their bodies that would hold it.

"Stay here, kids!" said Jack, rushing past. He skidded to a halt. "Er, not _here_ here, because the lab is off limits, but stay inside the house."

"Hurry up, Jack!" said Maddie impatiently, hefting the incredibly large and heavy-looking Fenton Bazooka easily over her shoulder. "We might still be able to catch it!"

Danny's parents disappeared behind the elevator door and took their arsenal with them.

"That was easy," remarked Tucker.

"Yeah, except they'll get to the school and realize that everyone is still there and there's no merperson." Danny groaned. "I'm going to be so grounded."

Sam winced. "Ah, sorry about that," she said, and it seemed earnest. For a few seconds, at least. "But, in the meantime, let's make you a costume. Where do they keep the Wetsuits?"

Danny sighed. "This way…"

He led his friends around the Siren Speeder, trying to avoid looking at the vessel and avoid thinking about everything its completion would mean. They came to a wall of supply cabinets and shelving that were bursting with spare parts, lab supplies, and raw materials for his parents' inventions. He opened a drawer that had been labeled "WETSUITS" with a sharpie and masking tape. Inside were his parents' backup Wetsuits along with Jazz's suit, which she had never touched and probably never would. Alongside those were the much smaller Wetsuits made for younger versions of Danny and his sister, similarly unused, as well as a jumble of extra gloves and boots and some scrap neoprene shoved up against the back of the drawer.

"Yes!" said Sam, grabbing the white gloves and boots that went with Jazz's suit. "Will these fit you?"

"The gloves, maybe," said Danny. "The boots? Three sizes too small."

"How about these?" said Tucker, dragging another pair of white boots out from under the tangle of floppy Wetsuit limbs. Danny took them and turned them over in his hands, wondering which suit they were supposed to go with. Upon further inspection of the drawer, he found a white suit that looked like something a slightly more miniature version of his dad could wear.

He held it up like a curtain. "Looks like my parents were expecting a growth spurt from Jazz."

They all burst out laughing.

Sam found the scraps at the back. "Can we do anything with these?" she said, holding up squares and strips of white and black neoprene.

"I think my parents have a machine to cut and shape the suits," said Danny. "We just have to program what we want it to do. Then we can probably use Fenton Adhesive to stick the pieces on my suit, if that's what you're thinking."

"Did you just mention programming a high-tech machine to cut and shape your supersuit?" said Tucker, eyes twinkling. "Because if so, I think I can help."

"Not exactly the words I used, but sure, go for it," said Danny.

It was basically out of his hands now. He gave the scraps and Wetsuit accessories to his friends, found the Adhesive (the very same glue as used in the Fenton Waterproof Tape), led them to the Fenton Wetsuit Factory, a multi-armed robot outfitted with various lasers and whirling cutting tools, and sat back while Sam took measurements and instructed Tucker on just what she wanted the Factory to make. Tucker caught on to the machine so quickly he could have been using it his entire life.

In little time at all, Sam was affixing a white belt to the midsection of Danny's Wetsuit. While cool, it didn't seem to have much purpose besides aesthetic. Next were two black pouches on either thigh, presumably to hold the water canisters from the sketch, and Danny agreed with her revision. Having a couple of bottles strapped to his waist didn't seem like it would've been comfortable for movement. Then Sam pasted a very thinly sliced piece of white in the center of the chest – the logo.

Danny peered over her shoulder at the little symbol. "That looks cool and all, but what does it mean?"

Sam pointed at the different parts of the logo. "See these? They're the prongs from a trident, which was Poseidon's weapon of choice. But if we turn the trident on its side, it looks like the letter 'D' – for Danny. I combined that with the letter 'T' – see? So, we get-"

"Danny Triton," Danny whispered, grabbing the suit and lifting it in his hands. He had been determined not to get excited about any of this, but his friends' enthusiasm must have been contagious. Because a supersuit, and his own hero identity? Even Danny had to admit it was kind of awesome.

"The 'Danny' part is more for our benefit than anything," said Sam. "We don't want someone making a connection between the merboy and Danny Fenton. So in public, let's stick with 'Triton'." Sam looked over what they had so far and crossed her arms, satisfied. "All we need now are your water canisters. Who's up for some shopping?"

Sam called her chauffeur, who was at Fentonworks within minutes. Tucker had been unconscious the one time he'd been driven around in the fancy black vehicle and was now ecstatic. "We have our own Alfred!" he exclaimed. The man was wearing a cap, but it was part of his uniform and his behavior was no different than Danny remembered it – unreadable – so it was hard to tell if he had been leeched. For their purposes, it didn't seem to make much difference.

At a sporting goods store, they found some stainless steel water bottles that were an appropriate size for the pouches on the suit. They were pretty expensive, but Sam paid for them like it was nothing, using her own credit card. Danny, who was lucky if his parents remembered to give him twenty dollars in allowance every month, gaped.

"What?" said Sam, noticing his unhinged jaw.

He clamped it shut. "Nothing!"

Next, they drove through the Nasty Burger for lunch and took the food back to Fentonworks Beach, purposefully avoiding the house and the lab. Together, the three of them hiked up the coast to the cave.

"I remember this place!" said Tucker when they arrived. "Fort Tucker!"

"I thought we called it the Lair of the Space Pirates?"

" _You_ called it that," said Tuck. "To me, it was always Fort Tucker. Ah," he sighed wistfully. "Good times."

They ate their burgers – and it wasn't until going to the Nasty Burger with Sam that Danny even realized they had tofurkey burgers – and for a short while, it was easy to forget that they weren't just three friends enjoying lunch on the beach.

Danny was the one who finally brought them back to the real world, the world where most of the town had been taken over by mind-control leeches and were being prepped for something mysterious and nefarious by an evil, megalomaniacal merman.

"I guess I should try the suit on," he said, balling up his trash and tossing it in the paper take-out bag. He took his backpack, the Wetsuit and all of its accessories inside, and went into the cave to change.

When he came back out a few minutes later, in a tight black suit with white boots and gloves, two sports bottles strapped to his thighs like guns for a Wild West fast draw, he felt like an idiot.

"I feel like an idiot," he told the others.

"No, you look great!" said Sam, while Tucker brought his PDA up and started taking pictures.

"Also, here's a problem," said Danny. He pointed one finger towards his face and traced a circle around it in the air. "What am I supposed to do about this? Dump a bucket of water over my head every time I need to be Triton? What happens when I dry off?"

"Can't you just… _not_ dry off?" said Tucker.

Danny raised an eyebrow. He hadn't thought of that before.

"Yeah!" agreed Sam. "Just keep the water from evaporating while you're Triton. You can do that, right? As for changing your head, that's what the water bottles are for! You'll always be ready for a fight, even when there's no water nearby."

"It's not exactly easy to change in and out of this," he added, in one last attempt to get out of wearing the clown suit.

"You could be like Spiderman!" said Tucker. "Wear it under your clothes and just put everything else on when you fishy sense trouble."

Danny let out a weary breath and accepted his loss. "Let's just practice," he grumbled, stomping over to the surf. He opened the bottles on his suit and used his hydrokinesis to fill them with water. Then, while he didn't necessarily like the idea of splashing himself in the face, he took a globe of water from the sea and splashed himself in the face. If he had felt like an idiot before, it was nothing compared to now.

Dripping wet, Danny glared at his friends, who were both laughing, as his felt his skin, teeth and ears changing. He focused on keeping his windpipe open and only suffocated for a second as his gills tried to take on the burden of breathing; at least he was getting better at _that_.

He wiped his sopping bangs out of his eyes and focused on not letting the water drip off of him, evaporate, or go anywhere in any way. It was much easier than he had anticipated, but it would require him to constantly keep a part of his attention on it. That would take some work getting used to.

He spent the next few hours at the beach with his friends doing just that, while he used his hydrokinesis to block projectiles they chucked at his head, lift driftwood and rocks from the sand, and get his water whip to accurately knock things over.

Danny only hoped it would be enough.

* * *

Danny, Tucker, and Sam managed to avoid both Danny's parents and going to school for the rest of Thursday and most of Friday. Danny was indeed grounded, according to a text from his mom, which had gone on to explain how his friend privileges were revoked and his Internet access curtailed… none of which stopped Danny from having Sam and Tuck over for a sleepover and spending half of the night doing research on his computer, trying - and failing - to figure out what Vlad was up to. What his parents didn't know wouldn't hurt them, and anyway, it was for a good cause.

"And I thought my parents were lax," Sam had commented after Danny failed to be punished in any meaningful way.

"They're not _lax_ ," Danny defended them. "They're just… distracted. They've got a lot on their plates, and so do we."

Friday passed too quickly. Danny spent several hours in the morning practicing, until Tucker and Sam forced him to stop before he exhausted himself. They then forced him to take a nap; Danny had at first protested but surprised himself by quickly falling asleep.

Then, it was time.

He and his friends slunk into the town hall just before the forum was scheduled to begin. They had to stand at the back as there wasn't a single empty seat left and hardly room to stand besides. It looked like the entirety of Amity Beach had been compelled to attend, and not one of them was missing a hat, scarf, hood, or plastic shopping bag on their heads.

Danny tried to look inconspicuous, and the result was that he felt incredibly conspicuous. He was wearing his Wetsuit under some jeans and a jacket, which he could vaguely feel rubbing against his body through the layer of neoprene. He'd also donned flip-flops and a baseball cap. All of it, he hoped, could be stripped and exchanged in a short amount of time for the rest of the costume that he'd brought with him in his backpack. Although finding somewhere to change was looking to be a challenge in itself.

His heart pounded in his chest. There were hundreds of leeched zombie people crammed into this room, and his danger sense was going haywire. Of course, it was probably also reacting to the man standing on the stage at the front.

Vlad Masters looked cool and composed as he surveyed the room from that elevated position, his head hat-free, the only one in the entire room. If they'd had any doubts about his involvement before - which they really hadn't - but if they had, those doubts could be thrown out now. Even his parents, Danny noticed sadly, had been caught. His mom was wearing her hood pulled up, and his dad had put on that ridiculous wide-brimmed cowboy hat he'd bought for Halloween a few years back.

_Oh yeah,_ tacked on Danny's unflaggingly optimistic inner monologue, _let's not forget, we don't have a plan_. Since they didn't know what Vlad intended, the most they could do was put Danny on standby in case things got bad. That, and pray Danny didn't die, because almost certainly things were going to get bad.

Maybe Tucker wasn't the first to have second thoughts, but he was the first to voice them. "Anyone else getting the feeling that we just walked into a death trap?"

The doors to the hall slammed shut, and some burly upperclassmen from Neptune High stepped in front of them, exactly like they were guarding the exits against anyone who tried to escape. Tucker gulped.

"Do you think he knows you're here?" whispered Sam, staring at the billionaire on the stage.

"Definitely," said Danny, narrowing his eyes. He bared his teeth at the Siren King before remembering he didn't have fangs in this form. He would have to make due with a normal scowl.

"Is there extra water you can use?" asked Tucker.

Danny was way ahead of him, having scouted the building with his water mode the moment they stepped inside. "A couple of water fountains and the bathrooms," he said, nodding to their right. "I should have plenty."

"Are you scared?" asked Sam. By the way she asked it, it was obvious that _she_ was, even if she tried to hide it. Tucker, too, was trembling and absentmindedly rubbing his head through his beret, probably remembering the leeches that had set up camp there earlier that week.

Danny swallowed. He was _terrified_. But it wouldn't help to tell them that. "You kidding?" he said. "When I think 'Friday night', I always think, 'town hall brawl', don't you guys?"

They chuckled. While still racing, their heart rates had slowed just a little.

Mayor Montez, smartly dressed in a navy suit and a fedora, stepped up to the podium and adjusted the microphone.

"People of Amity Beach," he began, with all of the oratory skills of a robot. It was so quiet in the hall that Danny could hear crickets chirping outside of the building. "Thank you for joining us this evening to discuss the recent threat of merpeople in our town. Today we have gathered with us the most capable minds in our community – Jeff Summers, founder and copartner of Axion Labs; Drs. Jack and Maddie Fenton, our own resident merhunting experts; and Vlad Masters of the DALV Corporation."

Apathetic applause peppered the room. The only ones showing any emotion at all were Vlad – smug – and Danny's parents, who for some reason looked confused.

Danny was confused, too. Everyone here was being controlled. So, why was Vlad having them go through the motions of the forum? What was he waiting for?

In any case, Danny didn't have to wait long to find out, for it was at about that moment that the left side of the town hall exploded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe some of you are wondering what the logo on his suit looks like! Well, wonder no more! I doodled that right up for you (because without drawing it, I never could have described it in the story). Take a look:   
> https://www.deviantart.com/thefullcatastrophe/art/DT-for-Danny-Triton-671495484


	24. Chapter 24

_I've always been obsessed with things that are half animal and half human – like mermaids and Minotaurs – because they are trapped in an animal body. And I felt trapped in my own life._

\- Riccardo Tisci

* * *

The wall on the left hand side of the building crashed inward in a shower of shattered bricks and mortar, leaving behind it a five foot hole and the strangest creature Danny had ever laid eyes on.

It was like whoever had designed merpeople'd had a first draft and decided to throw it out for a better model. From the waist down were the muscular and hairy legs of a middle-aged man, while from the waist up, the creature was entirely fish – literally just a giant fish head stuck on a person's body. It had jade green scales the size of saucers, huge lips, protruding eyes on either side of its head, and in the place of arms, two big fins that it flapped in what it must have considered a very threatening manner.

Truly, if 'merman' meant being half fish, Danny had definitely gotten the better end of the deal.

As the dust settled, for a moment the zombified citizens of Amity Beach stared at the creature in silence, and it stared back at them, first with one bulbous eye and then the other. The next moment, everyone was screaming and running, and the creature roared.

And until that moment in his life, Danny had been sure that fish were physically incapable of things like roaring. _I stand corrected_.

"Great, _now_ there's a reaction," he muttered, watching the chaos unfolding in the hall.

"Danny!" came Sam's urgent voice to his left. She shoved him, saying, "That's your cue! Go change!"

_Oh yeah. I'm the lucky guy who gets to face that. Joy._

"You guys stay out of the way!" he warned his friends, shouting over the noise of the room. "I don't want you getting hurt! And we'll meet back at Tucker's when this is over!"

"Yeah, we know!" said Sam. "Now get going!"

Groaning, Danny nevertheless sprinted to the hallway connecting the main auditorium to the washrooms and staff offices, dodging the people who seemed determined to flee directly into his path. Eventually, he reached the men's room and pushed inside.

It was empty, thankfully. Danny flung his backpack onto the counter by the sinks, unzipped it, and dumped its contents out in a heap. One of the heavy steel bottles rolled into the floor where it landed with a _clang!_ With frantic, fumbling fingers Danny stripped out of his clothes and exchanged them for the gloves and boots before shoving the water bottles into the pouches at his sides. His clothes he stuffed into his backpack, which he hid inside one of the stalls. He nearly turned then and ran back into the auditorium, realizing only at the last second that he'd forgotten to wet his head.

Danny ran back to the sinks and turned one on, shoving his head under the faucet and using his hydrokinesis to ensure that every bit of him from the neck up was coated in H2O. When he looked up again, he was staring into green eyes in the mirror. That they were wide and panicky was something he tried to ignore.

Danny pulled some of the water from the sink, collecting it in huge orbs around either of his fists before using the water itself to turn off the faucet. He bounced on the balls of his feet, trying to spring some confidence into his step, and then ran from the room.

Back in the auditorium, people were still running to and fro like decapitated chickens, but it seemed like not a single one of them was actually trying to get to the exits. _It's all a show_ , Danny realized. They weren't scared – they were only _acting_ that way.

He saw the fish monster stomping around in front of the hole in the wall, waving its fins at people. He saw his leeched parents trying to push through the crowd, weapons strapped to their backs and gripped in their hands. He caught a glimpse of Tuck and Sam, too, pressed up against the wall and staring wide-eyed at the scene. Someone he couldn't see in the midst of all this was Vlad, and that worried him.

But the creature was the most pressing problem at the moment. Danny dipped and swerved around the people blocking his path, jumping over chairs and using everything he'd learned from navigating hallways and running from bullies at school to cross the room. Soon he reached the edge of the crowd and was pushed unceremoniously into the swath of empty space surrounding the monster.

Danny staggered to a halt and straightened, getting his first good look at the creature. It must have been seven or eight feet tall, was super muscular, and it smelled strongly of… well, fish. Despite not being in the water, the green skin of its fish half looked slimy and damp, glistening in the fluorescent lighting of the hall. Also, for some reason Danny couldn't imagine, it was wearing a pair of bright red gym shorts. But, if it had gone out of its way to avoid public indecency in its attack on the people of Amity Beach, Danny certainly wasn't going to complain.

**What are you supposed to be, some kind of Mernotaur?** asked Danny. He crossed his arms and smirked at the monster, having a hard time seeing the threat. Sure, it could ram itself through solid brick walls, but it didn't have claws or tentacles or anything remotely scary on its body. **And what's your plan, fish brains? Are you going to flipper everyone to death?**

The Mernotaur – yes, that was definitely going to be its name – glared at Danny through its right eye. Its big lips pulled back, revealing two rows of very sharp yellow teeth, not even an inch wide but all about a foot long, crowded together in its mouth like the bristles of a comb. Opening its jaws, it roared at him, spit flying, the wind of its breath blowing Danny's hair back from his face.

It smelled _horrible_.

**Okay,** said Danny, stunned. **I said that before I knew you were mostly made out of teeth.** He just had time to make sure his hair and face were still wet – and not with Mernotaur drool – before the creature lowered its head and charged.

Danny jumped out of the way so that the Mernotaur crashed into a row of empty chairs, and in the process he ran right into one of the leech zombies. She grunted at the impact, and when her unfocused eyes fell on Danny, her mouth opened in a scream and she swung her handbag at his head.

He wasn't expecting this, so the bag hit him squarely in the face, and the woman must have been carrying a bowling ball in it or something because it was _heavy_. **Geez, lady!** he said, rubbing his smarting cheek. **I'm not the one you should be scared of here!**

The mind-speak did not help things; hearing it, the woman screamed even more shrilly and scrambled backwards from him. Noticing their fellow zombie in peril, a few people stopped fleeing and instead decided to throw things at Danny's head.

"Gah!" Danny used the water around his hands to make a shield, but not before someone's high-heel nearly hit him in the eye. Meanwhile, the Mernotaur was turning around for another assault.

Danny got ready to dodge, until he saw that the monster wasn't even looking at him, instead eyeing the crowd of people gathered to attack Danny. _Oh, no…_

**Move!** he shouted at them. The warning fell on deaf ears – or brains, rather. Danny did the only other thing he could think of. Pulling the water into a thick cable, he knocked the people out of the way just as the Mernotaur rushed toward them, gnashing its teeth. Missing them, the monster lost its balance and crashed into the floor about ten feet away.

On the plus side, no one got eaten. On the minus side, they _might_ have gotten tossed all over the place in a moderately painful way.

"It's the merboy!" shouted a voice that sounded suspiciously like Dash Baxter's; Dash, who even when being controlled by a monster parasite, never failed to be a thorn in Danny's side. "He's trying to kill us!"

More screaming. More projectiles. Less fleeing. An angry mob was growing around Danny, seemingly oblivious to the giant fish monster trying to turn them all into chum. That's when the first fist flew.

Danny ducked it and brought up a small shield of water to block the next swing. **Why can't you people understand that I'm trying to help you?** he shouted into their heads. Lance Thunder answered by grabbing a chair and swinging it at Danny's head. Whatever the weatherman had been using as a hat had fallen off, and Danny could see not one but three leeches fixed to his head.

_Right. I forgot. Zombies._

The Mernotaur roared again, flapping its fins angrily as it rose to its feet.

**So much… pain…**

_Huh?_ Danny cocked his head, wondering who in the world was mind-speaking to him.

**...stop… stop… make…** **_stop!_ **

The monster roared again, fanned its fins out to either side, and rushed at the crowd. Danny knocked most of the people out of the way with a huge water whip and lifted the last unfortunate man into the air with a hydro-tentacle.

"Unhand that innocent citizen, you unholy manifestation of anthropomorphic and aquatic horrors!"

Danny had just enough time to recognize that voice as his mom's before being blasted off of his feet.

He was thrown across the room, where he landed painfully on his stomach among the rubble of the Mernotaur's makeshift doorway. His back was concernedly numb, while the places around it – his waist and shoulders – throbbed. Shaking, Danny managed to roll over and tried to get a look at what hit him.

He quickly located the source of the attack – his mom, and with her a still-smoking Fenton Bazooka. She lowered the barrel and blew over the top of it.

That was really, _really_ worrying. But if that was what she had shot him with, why wasn't Danny dead? He was pretty sure that bazookas made things go 'boom', if Danny's experience with war-themed video games was anything to go by.

He did feel like he'd just been hit by a truck though, which, while being a few steps up from 'blown to smithereens', still wasn't a very pleasant feeling. All around him was a puddle of glowing blue goop which smelled acrid and according to his senses was mostly _not_ water. He also noticed that the innocent citizen his mom had been so concerned about was splayed face-first on the floor.

Danny moaned, both in pain and exasperation. _Great. Zombified merhunter parents, on top of everything else._

Danny's dad appeared at her side a second later. "Nice shot, babycakes!" he congratulated her, pecking her on the cheek.

"How do you like the taste of hot Fenton Bazooka?" Maddie gloated.

**Not my favorite** , Danny managed to answer. He thought about asking them what the Bazooka was supposed to do, but he saw the Mernotaur rearing behind his parents and realized he needed to save them or become an orphan. He got his trembling fingers to uncap the bottles on his suit, drew all of the water out in one swift pull, and slammed his parents to the side before the Mernotaur could wrap its jaws around them.

**Hurts! Hurts!** the voice from before cried, with a timbre like a building creaking in a hurricane. The Mernotaur stomped in a wide circle and roared again, rattling the windows of the town hall, and Danny realized it was the one speaking.

**I didn't even touch you!** Danny snapped at it. The feeling was returning to his back, but not in a good way, like his muscles were being twisted in a giant fist. Danny was having some trouble moving his arms, so he pulled the water back to him, collected it beneath his back, and used it to push to his feet. He felt dizzy, and his knees trembled once he had his feet planted on the floor again.

He needed to get the leeches off of his parents, he decided. Maybe if he did, they'd stop attacking _him_ and go after the obvious threat.

Danny started stumbling over the rubble to get to them and was surprised when somebody tackled him from behind. He would have screamed at the pain that exploded in his back if he hadn't been completely winded after hitting the floor again. He grabbed all of the water from the puddle around him and used it to fling the attacker off of him. Danny struggled back to his feet.

It looked like the guy who tackled him was Kwan. Well, probably Kwan. It was hard to see the face under the football helmet. All around him, the citizens of Amity Beach were gathering again, clenching their fists and grabbing bricks to throw at Danny or bludgeon him with. Danny, on his part, was getting really tired of every single thing in this room attacking him. He needed to get to his parents, but between them and him were an angry mob and an even angrier Mernotaur. If he could just pick himself up and fly across the room –

Danny's eyes widened. There was really no reason he couldn't.

_Hope this works,_ he thought, crossing his fingers. He called all of the water in the room back to him, both what he'd brought from the bathroom and the stash from his bottles, and solidified it a few inches off of the floor in front of him. He tested it with one foot, put all of his weight onto it, and then stepped up on to the little platform.

It held. Danny couldn't help laughing in disbelief.

His glee was cut short by a brick that missed his head by centimeters. Bending his knees to help his balance, Danny lifted the water – and himself with it – up into the air until he was a safe distance above the mob. Was there vertigo? Yes. Was it kind of amazing? Sure, it would have been, under different circumstances. Because he was basically flying.

From above their heads, Danny could see the Mernotaur taking a renewed interest in the crowd of people. **Hey, ugly!** he yelled at it. **Have you thought about taking a trip to the plastic sturgeon? You sure could use it!**

That got its attention. It began jumping and snapping at the air in an attempt to devour Danny. Luckily it was having difficulty getting around all of the overturned chairs, giving Danny just enough time to deal with his parents…

… who were ready to blast the Bazooka at him again.

"Woah!" he cried, and it was only his loss of attention dissolving the water disk underneath him that saved him from getting hit directly in the chest with the blast. He frantically collected the water beneath him and cushioned his plummet to the floor. Danny didn't even wait to stand up this time before he knocked his parents off of their feet with a water whip and pinned them both against the ground.

It wasn't going to hold long. His dad, struggling under the aquatic restraints, was too strong. He needed to make this quick. Danny stumbled over to his parents and dropped to his knees between them, turning to his dad's head first.

He noticed two things almost immediately. One, his dad's hat had fallen off somewhere. And two, there were no leeches on his head. Confused, Danny whirled around to his mother, ignoring the insults his dad was sending his way, and pulled the hood from her head. No leeches. Just one extremely ticked off Maddie Fenton.

**Why are you attacking me?** he asked them, bewildered.

"Because you're the scum of the earth and a threat to all mankind!" replied Jack. "And when I get my hands on you-"

**No time!** said Danny. The Mernotaur had arrived. Danny pulled the water off of his parents and spun to face the mouthful of teeth aimed their way. **Kill that, please?** he said, pointing at the monster.

Finally, his parents seemed to realize that there was a giant fish monster in the room with them. Maddie grabbed the Fenton Bazooka from where it had fallen to the floor, and Danny got to see just what the gun was intended to do:

The blast charged with a high-pitched whine, the barrel of the weapon glowing a brighter and brighter shade of blue. With a kickback that would have knocked a normal mom off of her feet, the Bazooka fired, releasing a shot of something so brilliant it hurt Danny's eyes to look at it.

The blast connected with the Mernotaur's chest, at once flinging it backwards. Where it connected, the skin audibly sizzled and continued to blaze cerulean. The Mernotaur screamed, trying to wipe its fins against its chest to get the substance off, and all it succeeded in doing was spreading the chemicals around.

**_Burns! Burns!_ **

Danny gaped, horrified. This close to his parents, he could smell the smoke from the weapon, and that alone seemed to sear the skin of his nose and throat. When it had hit him a few minutes ago, his Wetsuit must have protected him from the chemicals now trying to eat through the Mernotaur's torso. If he'd been entirely transformed –

He realized, belatedly, that the mouth of the weapon was hovering next to his head. It whined as it charged for a fourth blast. This time, there was no time to dodge. Danny just squeezed his eyes shut and tried to rapidly come to terms with his death.

The whining crescendoed, and then suddenly faded away.

"Jack," Danny heard his mother growl. "Did you forget to charge the Bazooka again?"

Danny wrapped his waist in water and flung himself into the air before even opening his eyes again. Gasping for breath, Danny let his eyes rove the building and finally spotted Tucker and Sam huddled behind some chairs in the hallway near the bathrooms. He instructed the water to carry him to them, intending to call a retreat.

Before he could reach them, the water changed directions and sped him toward the stage like it had a mind of its own, because unless he'd hit his head pretty hard, Danny was positive he had not told it to do that.

A few seconds later, Danny was carried backstage into the shadows behind the curtains and dumped on his face. He groaned and rose to his hands and knees, and his eyes met the pant legs of a very nice suit. Lifting his head, he saw who the pants belonged to – Vlad.

**I was wondering where you were hiding** , said Danny, pushing painfully to his feet.

Vlad had taken all of the water Danny brought with him and fashioned it into a ring that orbited his waist like the rings around a gas giant. _That's just showing off_ , thought Danny bitterly.

**Daniel**! Vlad greeted him. **I say, you never do cease to amaze me.**

**…** **thanks?** said Danny.

**If you were any easier to manipulate** , continued Vlad, clasping his hands behind his back and smirking, **I would think you were on my side after all. I didn't even need a leech on your head to have you do** ** _exactly_** **what I wanted.**

**You won't be saying that when I kick your butt** , Danny growled, totally bluffing. He could hardly move his legs, much less kick any butts.

Vlad laughed. **You still think you have a chance of defeating me? That coming to the fight in a costume would miraculously transform you into a hero? How quaint. I'm sorry to tell you this, but the real world simply does not work that way.**

**What are you trying to do here?** asked Danny. Distantly, the Mernotaur roared. **Why'd you leech the town? What's with the monster?**

**Did you forget so quickly? You promised me, and I quote, that you would prove to your parents that they could trust your merperson half and then expose everything I'm doing. Well, I couldn't stand by and let you do that, could I?**

Vlad dispersed the water and stepped up to Danny, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and leading the reluctant boy to the stage curtain. Using his free hand, the billionaire drew back the heavy fabric and opened a window to the rest of the room.

Now that Danny was gone from the hall, the people had calmed down, seemingly content to watch the Fentons try to topple the Mernotaur. Maddie was jabbing at it with an Extendable Fenton Porta-Harpoon while Jack tried to lasso the creature with a loop tied from the Fenton Fisher. Its wound was still glowing dimly blue, oozing dark blood.

**What** ** _is_** **that thing?** Danny asked again.

**A failure** , Vlad replied. **Once, a siren.**

**That used to be…?** Danny was appalled. What had Vlad _done_? How had that thing used to be a merperson? And it had been crying out in pain the whole time, long before the Fentons had shot it. **I thought you were their king.**

**We are all making sacrifices** ** _,_** said Vlad, without an ounce of regret in his tone. **Some more than others. But come now, Daniel, don't waste any energy feeling pity for him – he would have died soon, just like all the others, so I'm sure he would have been proud to use the last of his life in a battle against man, instead of rotting away at the bottom of the ocean.**

Danny couldn't find any words to reply, stricken dumb.

**Anyway,** said Vlad, happy to continue talking, **in a moment we will finish this charade.** **I will release the town from the parasites.**

Danny's eyes widened. He spun on Vlad, pulling out of his grasp and backing away a step. **You're going to let them go? Then – then they'll remember attacking me, and me trying to save them- !**

Vlad's smile was merciless. **I would not count on it. I've been assured that the longer a leech is attached to its host, the less the person will be able to remember – or have you not noticed their faculties becoming more and more muddled as the days passed?**

Danny thought about Mr. Lancer and winced. That had definitely not seemed like a person who was all there.

**Perhaps they'll recall glimpses of the monster, and at its side, the merboy attacking them relentlessly. And in the case they remember nothing at all, the fearless Amity news crews have recorded the entire episode. It won't take much to set their stories straight. By tomorrow morning** **_you_ ** **, my boy, will be this town's worst enemy.**

**But –** started Danny, scrambling for a lifeline. **My parents aren't being controlled. They'll realize** –

**Oh yes. I almost forgot the finishing touch.**

Vlad strode toward him, hooking a strong arm around Danny's neck and dragging him out into the open. He tossed Danny backward, and Danny tottered on the edge of the stage, swinging his arms and trying not to fall off.

"Get back, you monster!" Vlad cried, right before kicking Danny in the chest. Danny dropped from the stage and crashed painfully into the chairs below, where he struggled again to his feet, dimly wondering how many more times he'd be able to stand back up tonight before he simply couldn't. "You've chosen the wrong community to threaten, merboy, and the wrong man. I know what you've done to these good people, and I know how to stop it."

Vlad reached into his jacket and withdrew a fat silver device that looked like a gun from a bad sci-fi movie. Pointing it to the ceiling of the auditorium, he pressed a big red button, and a high-pitched whine rang across the room. All at once, the townspeople cried out and started ripping off their hats and head coverings. The leeches on their heads writhed and began to fall to the floor, and if that wasn't enough, dissolved into gooey black-and-red puddles at their feet.

When it looked like all of the leeches were done for, Vlad released the button and pocketed the gun. About half of the people in the hall immediately fainted, falling limply to the floor, regardless of the chairs, rubble, or melted leeches they would land in. The other half of the crowd blinked in mute terror at the scene around themselves.

Jack and Maddie had stopped fighting, looking bewildered at the sudden turn of events. The Mernotaur took that opportunity to spin around and crash headfirst through the wall behind him, leaving behind another gaping hole in the side of the building.

All that left was Danny, standing at the head of the auditorium surrounded by an ocean of monster guts and unconscious, battered townsfolk, while one of the richest and most famous men in the country pointed an accusatory finger at him.

There was a lot of screaming.

**I would run, if I were you,** Vlad advised him from behind his triumphant smile. Already, the Fentons were shoving their way through the remaining crowd, brandishing their weapons of choice above their heads.

Not trusting his legs, Danny gathered what was left of the water from the stage, threw himself on his stomach on top of it, and had it carry him out through one of the holes in the wall.

He flew with little direction in mind other than _away_. Danny could feel his energy running out and knew he wasn't going to be able to use his hydrokinesis for much longer. Indeed, about five blocks from the town hall, his powers gave out and he tumbled onto the ground in a splash of water.

Groaning, his chin stinging from a scrape against the pavement, he looked up and saw the Mernotaur stumbling down the middle of the road just ahead. If it had noticed his arrival, it wasn't showing it. All around them were suburban developments, lawns neatly trimmed, the windows dark. Most likely, the families who lived on this street had all been at the town hall meeting.

The Mernotaur veered to the right and crashed into a car parked by the curb, smashing the passenger's side window and setting off the alarm. It managed to take a few more steps before it dropped to one knee and couldn't rise again.

Danny stood, his legs quivering like jello. Hesitantly, he approached the creature that had once been a merperson.

**Hurts… hurts…** the Mernotaur mind-spoke, broadcasting its message for whoever was close enough to hear; Danny was certain it had no idea he was there.

He tiptoed around to the front of the creature and saw the damage his parents had caused. Its front was a raw wound, burned by whatever chemicals the Fentons had packed into the Bazooka. A few gashes from the Porta-Harpoon marred its head and had ripped through one of its fins. Some of its scales had been scraped off, maybe from crashing into things all night.

Danny realized that it was staring at him through one bleary eye. It heaved breaths between its teeth, and the air rattled in its lungs. Danny's heart jumped into his throat, and for a moment he was frozen.

**Hurts,** the Mernotaur repeated, this time pleadingly, this time unmistakably intending the word for Danny.

Danny swallowed his terror, but his throat remained tight. **I'm so sorry…** he told it.

**_Hurts…_ **

Danny imagined a map of Amity Beach. The town hall, which was in the heart of Amity Beach's downtown, was not far from the public beach. He could feel the ocean – sadly, in the opposite direction to the one in which they'd been fleeing, but still not so far. Ten blocks, maybe eleven?

**Let's get you out of here,** Danny suggested to it. They would have to hurry and go back by a different route, in case Danny's parents were pursuing them. It was a big risk, and the chances of making it there slim. But Danny couldn't just leave the Mernotaur to die in the middle of the street.

He envisioned the ocean and tried to convey that image to the Mernotaur – the cool and healing water, the soft sand, all far from the people trying to hurt it - using his mind-speak without words. It must have caught the picture from him, for it mustered the strength to push to its feet. Awkwardly, ignoring the creature's pungent smell, Danny wrapped his arm around its back and let it lean into him as he led it slowly to the beach.

It was a long and painstaking time before they reached the waterline. Many times the Mernotaur stumbled and tried to drop to the ground, and many times Danny wanted to let it, sure he couldn't move one step further. But at last, somehow, they arrived.

The pavement turned into the broad stretch of sand of the beach, agonizing to trudge through. However, with the water so close the Mernotaur had found hidden reserves of energy to move toward it. By the time they reached the surf, the creature was practically running. It broke away from Danny's support, splashed into the shallows, and was soon engulfed in the dark waves.

Danny heard a last message from it before it disappeared entirely, like a whisper in his mind: **Thank you…**

"You're welcome," Danny whispered back.

It felt like his heart was being squeezed in his chest; he expected his eyes to burn, for tears to come, and waited for them as some release from the emotions mounting inside of him that he couldn't even begin to make sense of. But he waited for minutes and nothing came. All Danny could do was clench his fists and show his fangs to the unforgiving darkness of the water, his entire body quivering.

Because of course merpeople couldn't make tears. Of course not.

Realizing that, Danny flung the water from his head, barely noticing the ache of the change. As soon as he did, pressure built behind his eyes, and tears flowed freely over his face. It was like a dam breaking. He fell to his knees in the sand and for a long time did nothing but cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. I created the Mernotaur as a joke, but by the end of the chapter I was getting choked up about the poor guy. And poor Danny. He was beaten six ways from Sunday.
> 
> Endnote 1: The Mernotaur was inspired by the Minotaur from the Percy Jackson series, which when it first appears is seen wearing a pair of tighty whities.
> 
> Endnote 2: There was never a good place in this chapter to explain just how the leeches worked, not even in Vlad's villain monologue. So, let's talk about these leeches. They were put into the Amity Beach water supply and over a few days managed to attach to most of the people by way of bath and shower. They didn't reach every house at once, and it might not have been until the second exposure that the leeches could latch on. Once they did, mostly people carried on like usual, but the longer they wore the leeches, the fewer of their mental faculties they retained – which is why Tucker was pretty lucid and could remember the experience, but Lancer seemed to 'run out of batteries'. Now, how was Vlad controlling them? Well, there was a psychic connection between Vlad and the leeches (because of ~alchemy wooooo~), and he could either send out mind-speak commands to affect everyone, like "Come to Town Hall at 6:00 Friday night, and make sure you scream a lot and attack the merboy", or specific commands to a few people like, "Hey you, guard the exit". Yeah, it probably took a lot of energy on Vlad's part, but he'd never tell.


	25. Chapter 25

_"Before success comes in any man's life, he's sure to meet with much temporary defeat and perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That's exactly what the majority of men do."_

\- Napoleon Hill

* * *

Sam watched helplessly as Danny flew out of the building on his unsteady glob of water, his merhunting parents hot on his trail. She rose from her hiding place, unaware that she was squeezing Tucker Foley's hand, even when he used his free one to tap her softly on the shoulder.

Mechanically, she turned to him. While he didn't look quite as appalled as Sam, he was pale, and his smile seemed like nothing more than a thin veil to hide whatever he was feeling underneath. "Hey. He'll be okay. Did you see how fast he was going? They're not gonna catch him on foot." Shaking his head disdainfully at the thought, he tacked on, "No way."

"Sure," murmured Sam.

"So," said Tucker, pulling at his captive hand, "Why don't you release your death grip, and we can grab Danny's stuff and get back to our rendezvous point?"

"Ah, right!" Sam quickly let go, and Tucker drew his hand back, hissing and massaging the circulation back into it.

"Yeowch! Who knew girls could be so strong?"

"Really?" Sam deadpanned. "Girl jibes? Right now?" _Right now, while Danny might be getting murdered by his own parents?_

The abashed technophile winced, and his smile vanished. "Yeah, bad timing. Sorry."

Sam shook her head at the floor, splattered with liquefied leeches and brick dust, and stomped off toward the restrooms. "Whatever. Let's just get out of here. And _find him_."

They found his backpack stashed in one of the stalls in the men's room, his 'civvies' safely inside. Sam had been the first one to storm into the room, despite Tucker's protests that she wasn't allowed in there, and she was the one to sling the backpack over her shoulder, even when Tucker offered to carry it. She gripped the strap in both hands so tightly that her fingers shortly went numb.

It was the only thing she had of him right now, like a token of his safety. It was silly, irrational, but while she held it, she felt like she would definitely see him again, to place it into his hands and return it to its rightful owner.

No one bothered them or even seemed to notice as they left the town hall. Most people were too caught up in their own private panics or in making sure that their friends, loved ones, and neighbors, collapsed unconscious on the floor, were going to be okay. People were crying, sobbing, devolving into hysterics. And all the while, Janus-faced Vlad Masters was circulating among them, playing the sympathetic savior while privately gloating over his victory. If Sam hadn't known he could kill her as soon as snap his fingers, she would have tackled him to the floor and strangled him.

In the back corner of the room, the conscious half of a baffled news crew was rewinding their tape of the evening and marveling at their luck. Sam couldn't help but notice that Vlad Masters's winding path through the crowd seemed to be aimed in their direction. Whatever had just happened here tonight, the evening news was bound to paint Vlad the hero and Danny the villain - regardless of the eight-foot fish monster that had actually started everything. In the aftermath of the zombie-leech infestation, Sam wasn't so sure anyone actually cared about the monster anymore.

And they would blame Danny for the leeches. Vlad made certain of that.

Sam felt bile rise in her throat. Powerless, she glared once more at the Siren King and left the building. By the time she and Tucker reached the crosswalk at the intersection, ambulances had begun to arrive.

It struck Sam as odd that there was anyone left to drive the ambulances, anyone not infected by the leeches, until she realized - of course Vlad wouldn't be a proper hero if the people he saved were left without medical care for an entire night. He wanted to wrap this up with a pretty bow for his gullible public and move on to his next scheme.

It was all so neat and tidy, like clockwork. Danny hadn't stood a chance.

Tucker's house was empty when they got there. Tucker looked around, bewildered, and then smacked a hand to his forehead. "Crud. Mom and Pops must've been at the town hall the whole time!"

"Makes sense," said Sam, shrugging. "It looked like almost the whole town was there." Sam had even glimpsed her own parents among the crowd as they left, her father trying to calm his belligerent wife who was shrieking her desire to "speak to whoever's in charge here!"

"I didn't even think…" Tucker collapsed onto his living room sofa. "I was so caught up in worrying about Danny I didn't even wonder if my folks were okay." He glanced up at Sam, eyes shining behind his glasses. "You think-?"

Sam told him the same words he'd told her about Danny. "They'll be okay. As far as I can tell, no one was seriously hurt. I don't think the leeches cause any lasting damage, and Danny made sure that monster didn't hurt anyone." She sat next to him and patted him on the knee. "Don't worry."

They passed the next hour in awkward and tense silence. Knowing each other only through Danny, Sam and Tucker were still practically strangers to each other and did not know what to say. At one point, Tucker got a phone call from his dad, who wanted to know if Tucker was okay and to tell him that he would be spending the night at the hospital with his mom.

Tucker was on his feet and almost sprinted through the door when he heard that, until his dad assured him that she had only suffered minor scrapes and bruises. The hospital was simply going to keep the leech-victims in observation until they could be sure of any lasting side effects.

Sam got a similar phone call a few minutes later, although there was a lot less love in the exchange:

" _Samantha? It's your mother. Where in Heaven's name are you?"_

"I'm fine," Sam snapped back. "I'm at a friend's house."

" _Well… good. Did any of those horrible leeches get on you?"_

"No, Mother. I'm fine."

" _What a relief! Anyhow, your father and I are going to be away for some hours, to sort out this mess with the Mayor and Mr. Masters. How Montez could have let this happen is beyond me! Isn't he supposed to be our_ mayor _? My goodness!"_

Pamela Manson, being true to form and finding someone to blame - although it was clearly the wrong someone.

"Yeah, sure. See you sometime, then." And Sam hung up.

More time passed, and Sam was on her feet, pacing the floor and ready to go out into the night to look for him, when Danny walked through the front door.

Sam didn't think. She ran to him and threw her arms around his neck, letting go immediately when he grunted and faltered at the impact. She took two quick steps backward and actually looked at him.

He looked terrible. His wetsuit was covered in dirt from the wrecked town hall and the crusted blue chemicals from his parents' gun. His shoulders sagged inward, and the way he held himself made it obvious he was in pain. His face - human - was pale and taut, and his eyes red and swollen from crying.

"Are you okay?" she asked quietly, wanting to reach out and touch him but not daring to.

He looked at her, shook his head, and dropped his gaze to the carpet.

"Dude," said Tucker, who had appeared at Sam's side. "What happened?"

Danny limped past both of them and gingerly lowered himself onto the couch, groaning at the effort. He laid his head back and closed his eyes, eyebrows creased in pain. Physical, emotional, or both, Sam wasn't sure.

Sam and Tucker both stood by, unsure of what to do or say. Sam wrung her hands in front of her, wishing she had something concrete to do or some way to help him. Tucker had taken off his hat and was twisting it between his fingers.

Finally, Danny spoke. His voice was quiet, rough. "The monster," he started. He opened his eyes and peered at the ceiling, seeming to look beyond it. " _Vlad_ did that."

Tucker glanced at Sam, bemused. "Uh, yeah? I mean, we kinda figured-"

Danny interrupted him. "It used to be a merperson. Vlad, he… he's experimenting on his own people. That thing was… no, it _is_ … a person. And he was in pain."

Tears pooled in his eyes again and slid from their corners, turning the skin they touched pearlescent.

"I helped him get back to the ocean," he continued. "But I don't know how long he'll survive like that. Vlad said he was a 'failure', whatever that means. And according to Vlad, all of the other failures died."

Sam sat next to Danny on the couch, deliberately leaving space between them. Part of her wanted to wrap him in a hug and wipe away his tears. The other part was frozen, and he felt miles away, not inches.

In the past two days, the three of them had begun to feel like a team. Now, another invisible barrier had appeared between Danny and his friends. It had been easy to design a superhero's costume for him and to help him train with rocks and bits of driftwood. But in the end, Danny was the one who had gone into the fight, and he was the only one who had gotten hurt. All alone, he'd had to fight a delirious mutant, Vlad Plasmius, his own parents, and the very people he had been trying to protect.

This was as much Sam and Tucker's faults as Vlad's.

"I'm so sorry, Danny," she whispered. "You should never have gone there."

"Yeah," he chuckled bitterly. "I played right into his hand."

Tucker frowned. "But if Danny didn't go, think of everyone who might have been killed! Like my parents! Danny saved people's lives tonight."

"And a lot of good it did him," argued Sam. "Now everyone thinks he's the one behind the leeches! They'll send out a lynch mob for him."

"So, Danny'll just have to prove them wrong! After J. Jonah Jameson and the Daily Bugle, the public didn't like Spider-Man, either, but he still-"

"Oh my god, will you listen to yourself?" Sam asked, shoving to her feet. She thrust her hands out to their mutual merfriend and fumed at Tucker. "Danny almost _died_ tonight. Do you get that? He isn't _Spider-Man_ , he's Danny Fenton! He's not a superhero - he's a kid!"

"Right," drawled Tucker, narrowing his eyes. "'Cause I'm the one that said, "You're a superhero" and threw the schematics for a supersuit at him."

"No, I know I'm just as guilty!" retorted Sam. She ran her fingers through her hair and squeezed her eyes shut. "That's not the point."

"Then what's your point, Sam Manson? I'm all ears."

"The point is," said Sam, biting back tears, "we're not the ones fighting. He is. And it's our fault he was out there in the first place."

"Guys," said Danny quietly.

Sam and Tucker both turned to their friend, and the steam evaporated from their argument. Danny leaned forward, hugging his crossed arms over his chest. He didn't seem angry at them, either one - just drained.

Patiently, he spoke to them: "Vlad Masters is planning mass genocide on a scale no one's ever seen. He's the king of a race of super-powerful magical creatures that like to eat people, and he's trying to get them here on land. We're the only ones who know what he's up to, and out of the three of us, I'm the only one who has the power to do anything about it. Even if I'd known it was a trap, I still would have gone there tonight. With or without a 'supersuit'."

"But Danny," said Sam, and finally the tears broke through, "you _don't_. You don't have the power to stop him."

The young man sighed and nodded, running a hand through his messy and grimy hair. "I know. If I fight him again, he'll probably kill me."

Sam did not know what to say, and Tucker was silently sober as well.

"That's why," said Danny after several more seconds, "I decided I'm going to go talk to someone that _can_ stop him."

"You don't mean your parents?" said Tucker. "After what just happened? You think that's really a good idea?"

"Not my parents. Birghid."

Tucker's eyes widened, and he opened and closed his mouth a few times, like he had a protest on the tip of his tongue.

Sam frowned. The name sounded familiar, but she was still too new to the game to immediately recognize it. "Wait, who's Birghid?"

Danny turned to her, and the lack of light in his eyes was vaguely disturbing. Even when she had known him as just Danny Fenton and seen him staring into space at school, troubled and lost in his own thoughts, he had never looked so defeated. This battle, this defeat, must have been hitting him harder than Sam could imagine.

"Kaima's mom. Empress of the Merfolk. I think, if anyone has a chance of stopping Vlad, it's going to be her. Once I tell her what he's up to, she'll have to step in and do something. If not for the humans, at least to save her own people. Don't forget that Vlad's planning to have my mom and dad slaughter them in the not too distant future."

"Wait, wait, wait, just hold up," interjected Tucker. "This is the same Birghid who, last time you met, threw you in merperson prison, right? You really think it's a good idea to just swim right up to her and ask her for help?"

Danny shrugged and winced in pain. Sam remembered the blast he had taken to his back from the Fenton Bazooka and, slightly nauseous, wondered what it must look like underneath his suit.

"I mean, I don't like her either, Tuck, but do we really have any other options at this point? Besides, she seemed… reasonable." Tucker raised an incredulous eyebrow, so Danny added, "At least she doesn't eat people."

"But, man, look, if you go there… We can't go with you."

Sam saw Tucker clenching his fists at his sides and finally recognized in him what she had been feeling all night - desperate powerlessness.

Danny nodded. "Good. I wouldn't want you to." Sam only had a second to be offended before he explained, "All of this is way too dangerous. I don't think I could stand it if either one of you got hurt."

Sighing, Danny drew himself wearily to his feet. "I'm going to go tonight, before my parents have a chance to realize I'm gone. Vlad won't expect me to make my next move yet either. He probably thinks I've given up after tonight." Baring his canines, he growled, "But I'm not done yet."

* * *

Danny ignored his friends' protests as he stumbled out of Tucker's house. Luckily Tuck only lived a few blocks away from Fentonworks, and from there it was a short elevator ride down to the beach. Danny couldn't say why, but he knew that once he was in the water his wounds wouldn't ache so badly. It was the same instinct telling him this that was always pulling him oceanwards. He hated to entertain the thought, but perhaps it was the merperson soul inside of him playing tricks to get what it wanted, which was to be back in the water -

Permanently.

Danny drowned that thought before it could frighten him out of the job he had to do. He didn't even know for sure that there _was_ another soul inside of him. Just the thought of Kaima - the pink mermaid kid princess who, last seen, had busted him out of jail and led his parents away from capturing him at their buoy - feeding him a still-beating merperson heart seemed way beyond farfetched. It was some Vlad Masters level insanity.

So there had to be another explanation. And maybe while he was down there, he could finally find out what it was.

When Tucker and Sam had realized they weren't going to stop him, they trailed behind him all the way down the street.

"What do we tell your parents if they're looking for you?" asked Tucker.

"I don't know," he shrugged. "I'm at your house. I'm at Sam's house. I've gone to space camp. You'll think of something."

"And when exactly are you planning on being back?"

"When I get back," he said simply. Was he being flippant? Maybe a little. Did his friends deserve that? Probably not. He just couldn't think that far ahead yet. His only goal right now was getting to the Merfolk palace and getting an audience with the Empress. Everything else was unimportant.

"Danny," said Sam, clear worry in her voice. "I hate to be the devil's advocate and all, but what if you don't come back?"

That stopped his stumbling pace. Unbidden, his mind flashed back to the battle, when his parents had held the Bazooka up to his head and pulled the trigger point blank. He should have died right then. It was only thanks to his dad's absent-mindedness that he hadn't. And one of the loudest thoughts in his head, when he was so sure he was about to kick that proverbial bucket, had been - _What happens when they find out what they've done?_

"Tell them the truth," he told her. Then he smiled wryly. "But give me a few days before you write me off, okay?"

Sam didn't look particularly pleased with that answer. She stared into his face, eyes flicking back and forth like they were looking for something. Confused, Danny looked away and restarted his trek to Fentonworks. Something had been awkward between them since the moment he'd gotten back from the battle. Like it wasn't going to be easy to talk with her anymore.

Then again, with everything he'd gone through that night, he could have been imagining things. He wasn't exactly in the best place emotionally, and Sam couldn't have been either. And just like getting home in time for curfew, drama between him and his friends was pretty low on his list of priorities at the moment.

As expected, his parents weren't home yet - probably still out hunting for him and the Mernotaur. As for Jazz, who knew? She'd had the leeches on her head for awhile, so Danny was going to guess she was either unconscious at town hall or getting checked over at the hospital. Either way sucked for her but was good for him.

They made it down to the lab, where Danny scheduled some surprise maintenance for the buoy closest to Fentonworks. It immediately shut down and started scanning and scrubbing all of its drives, which would take it the next few hours to accomplish.

"They're gonna figure it out if you keep scheduling maintenance on their buoys," noted Tucker.

"It's not like I'm planning to do this all the time," grumbled Danny in response. "Besides, I was more careful this time. I only shut down the buoy I needed. They'll be too distracted with everything that went down tonight to even notice."

"Right. Whatever you say, man..."

Outside of the door to the lab, Danny walked straight out to the surf. It washed over his neoprene boots and slid back out, entreating him to go with it into the night-black sea.

"Hide my clothes and suit over at the cave, okay? I'll go there first when I get back."

"Alright, Danny..." said Sam, who was carrying his backpack.

Danny bent to take off his boots and tossed them one by one onto the dry sand next to his friends. On the next wave, his feet were washed over by pins and needles as webbing sprung between his toes and elongated his feet into something more like flippers.

He had just taken off his gloves when Sam pulled him into another hug. He hissed at the pain of her arms squeezing his back, but this time she didn't let go. "Be safe," she whispered.

His heart thumped, and he was sure he would have been glowing like a flashlight if he'd been in his merform.

"Yeah, I will," he said, hesitantly hugging her back.

He was even more surprised when, as soon as she let go, Tucker hugged him, too. _Tucker_. They hadn't hugged since elementary school. Because two dudes hugging just wasn't cool.

"Ditto on what she said," said Tucker, squeezing him once and letting him go. "You still haven't been my finman on any dates. So if I find out you've gone belly up, imagine how betrayed I'm gonna feel. You remember that before you go picking any fights with terrifying merman hunter jerkwads."

"So that's what I have to look forward to when I get back?" retorted Danny, rolling his eyes.

Tucker grinned, spreading his hands to either side. "What can I say? Simple guy, simple needs, and one of those needs just happens to be getting my merman best friend to help me pick up girls."

Even though it hurt his sides, Danny laughed. As soon as he started, it wasn't long before the other two were laughing as well.

"I'll come back as soon as I can," said Danny, giving them a hopefully reassuring smile.

"You better," said Sam, punching him lightly on the arm. Right on top of one of his bruises.

"Agh!" he yelped. "Are girls supposed to be this strong?"

Sam slung his backpack at his head, growling, "Not you, too! Yes, news flash: girls are strong. Get over it!"

Danny, laughing again, swatted away her attacks.

Then it really was time for him to go. "Erm, awkward request. Could you both turn around for a sec?"

"Uh, why?" asked Tuck.

"Think about it," said Danny, flicking his finger against the zipper of his wetsuit.

Sam's mouth rounded into an 'o', and simultaneously she and Danny flushed and found some very interesting sea shells to look at.

"Nothing to be ashamed of," said Tucker, grinning at their embarrassment. "In the immortal words of Tommy Pickles, 'Nakey is good, nakey is free.'"

"Kill me," Danny groaned.

"Nope, not gonna look," chirped Sam. "I'm turning around. See? Turned around. I'll even put my hands over my eyes."

Tucker winked and turned around, too.

Quickly, fumbling, blushing, Danny tugged the wetsuit off and tossed it onto his boots and gloves. Shivering in the sudden cold of the late October night, he sat down on the sand and wrapped the next wave around himself to pull him about fifteen feet out from shore.

Finally surrounded by saltwater, his body made the change in seconds. The shifting of his bones and muscles, the stretching of his skin, it all should have been uncomfortable, but compared to the bruises from the battle, the ache of the change came as a relief more than anything else. Cool water filtered over his gills deliciously, and it seemed to suck the pain right out of his limbs and back. For a moment, he closed his eyes and simply let the ocean hold him in her arms.

Remembering his friends, he briefly resurfaced, long enough to wave a webbed hand at them and say, **See you soon!**

Then they were gone, and the ocean was everything.

* * *

Danny swam as quickly as he dared, letting the senses of his water mode guide him east along the naturally sloping ocean floor. While he didn't think Vlad would attack him again tonight, there were other enemies he needed to look out for, and the way his muscles were clenching painfully around the Bazooka blast mark on his back meant he wasn't as agile as he should be. The moon was only half full tonight and waning, and it did little to light the water besides dusting its silver on the waves overhead. Danny's own bioluminescence cast a ghostly glow around him, a globe of light in the murk. He recognized that, unless he got deeper quickly, he would be a beacon to anything less-than-friendly to merpeople on the surface.

He reached the undersea cliff in short time and immediately swam down to its base. From there, he swam among the shadows of the tall sea grasses until his parents' buoy passed harmlessly overhead and was put far behind him.

But exhaustion began to wash over him. His eyelids started to droop, and his water mode constricted, giving him only fuzzy images of his surroundings.

 _Jeez,_ he thought, _am I doomed to always fall asleep on this journey?_ The same thing had happened to him last time he'd gone out to find the Merfolk Empire - although drifting off while taking a relaxing break in the sun and collapsing after having the snot beat out of you were totally different reasons for it.

Resignedly, he cast a mental look around for a place to curl up for the night. A few hundred yards away, he detected a couple of boulders with a crack between them just big enough for a young merperson like himself to squeeze between. It would have to do.

He arrived at the rocks a few seconds later. They leaned against each other, pockmarked and patched with dark algae. There was a shadowy crack at their base which, yes, was big enough for a guy to squeeze into but looked way more claustrophobic in person. Danny decided to use his hydrokinesis to dig a bigger hollow into the sand there before he called it 'home' for the night.

Finally, he was able to lay down inside the little aquatic burrow by curling up there into a ball. He let his head drop against the soft sand and blinked a few times at his immediate surroundings. Granules of sand were settling around him, sparkling in the glow of his silver light. Through the gap between seafloor and the rocks, he could see the dark ocean stretching hugely into the distance. He breathed in saltwater and released it through his gills. Everything was immensely quiet.

This was peaceful. Unlike last time, when Danny hadn't trusted his gills to keep him alive, he now felt completely at ease in his merform and comforted by the water surrounding him. He could, for at least the moment, pretend that by escaping Amity Beach he had left all of his problems there on the land, too.

Relaxed, exhausted, he closed his eyes and slept deeply and dreamlessly for several hours. He didn't wake until one of the boulders hiding him was thrust to the side, and he was lifted unceremoniously out of his burrow, upside-down by the base of his tailfin.

 **Finally,** exclaimed the merman, raising Danny to eye level. **After weeks of searching, I've found you…** _ **abomination**_ **.**

Disoriented, Danny blinked rapidly at the muscular indigo merman holding him. Even upside-down, he recognized the merman's predatory grin and jaguar-like golden eyes and immediately wished he didn't.

Skulker.


	26. Chapter 26

_One does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, one kills in order to have hunted..._

\- Jose Ortega y Gasset

* * *

Gazing up into Skulker's malicious grin, all Danny could think was, _Seriously? He finds me_ now? _Can't a guy catch a break?_

Ever since he'd become half-merperson, it was like the universe was throwing everything at him but the celestial kitchen sink. Come to think of it, he couldn't even remember when he'd last had downtime. When was the last time he'd played Doomed? Why wasn't he playing Doomed right now? Wasn't that what normal 14-year-olds did with their weekends? Instead, here he was strung up like a prize catch by Mr. Muscles.

**I guess I should say 'thanks',** he quipped, still wrapping his mind around the idea that, yes, he was awake, and yes, Skulker was actually there. **You're better than an alarm clock**.

The merman raised his brows, looking surprised. **I don't know what this 'alarm clock' is, but it seems you've finally learned to speak.**

Danny weighed the situation. On the one hand, Skulker knew the way back to the Merfolk palace and worked for the Empress. On the other hand, the guy had apparently been hunting Danny for weeks and was now looking at him like a cat would look at a mouse it's just pulled out of its hole.

So, Skulky was probably not the person Danny should be asking for directions.

**That's not all I've learned,** Danny replied, before pulling his fist back and slamming it up into Skulker's chin.

He didn't have super strength - or even regular strength, for that matter; Danny was probably one of the least buff superheroes around - but the hit surprised Skulker enough for the merman to let go of his tail.

Danny twisted around and shot across the field of seagrass into the early morning gloom. Desperate for every second his distraction had bought him, Danny didn't realize what was coming until it was too late, when his fishy sense screamed at him and his water mode filled in the ominous details. He jerked his body vertically, slammed his tail downwards, spread his pelvic fins, held up his hands as a shield, and crashed full speed into a wall of water as solid as cement.

Danny ricocheted backwards, falling on his back onto a similarly solid surface, where he lay dazed, head spinning and arms on fire at taking the brunt of the impact.

He was in a box. As soon as Danny hit one wall the others had materialized around him on all sides.

Skulker swam up to the aquatic cage at a leisurely pace, smirking and massaging his chin. **A surprise attack. Not bad. But it will take a lot more than that to get away from me, whelp.**

**Joy** , Danny groaned. All around him, the walls of the box were beginning to constrict, like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. Danny didn't know if Skulker was doing that to scare him or if the merman hunter actually intended to crush him to death. Either way, he wasn't going to sit around to find out.

Mustering all of his mental strength, Danny used his own hydrokinesis to push back against Skulker's.

It didn't even slow him down. The walls moved rapidly closer, and Danny started to panic. He curled his tail up close and thrust his arms out to push against the water walls, which pushed back like Danny's arms were made of rubber.

It seemed like nothing he could do to Skulker's hydrokinetic box was going to break it. That left only one option.

Just as the ceiling began to press down on him, Danny used his hydrokinesis to form a hasty column of water _outside_ of the box - right next to Skulker's head. Danny jerked his own head to the left, and the column pummeled into the hunter.

As hoped for, the box instantly dissolved, and Danny was free once more.

Again, he shot away into the water, this time revving up his water mode and expanding his senses around himself by hundreds of yards. The next time Skulker threw up a wall in front of him, Danny was able to dodge it, and to dodge the one that materialized above him a second later.

Danny could tell by the beating of Skulker's heart that he was gradually putting distance between them. While Skulker was unbelievably strong and had awesome hydrokinesis powers, his speed was nothing compared to Vlad's. When Vlad had led Danny on that chase through the ocean, Danny had been able to keep up with the fruitloop the whole time. After that, outswimming Skulker was a cinch.

_It's all that running away from bullies_ , he thought. _Best skill in the world_. He'd have to thank Dash the next time he saw him. Boy, would that be a one-in-a-million conversation. _Hey Dash, remember all those times you wailed on me? Turns out you were actually helping me!_ Dash would probably be too confused to even get mad.

Danny wasn't sure what the range on Skulker's hydrokinesis was, but the hunter had stopped trying to pin him in a box, so chances were that Danny had swum outside of it.

Before he could celebrate his victory, however, Skulker sent forward a warning: **You can swim, but you can't hide! No matter where you go, I can track you. There's a reason I'm known as the ocean's greatest hunter. There will be no escaping me!**

**Greatest hunter?** Danny tossed back. **You sure they didn't call you the ocean's biggest blowhole?**

And just like Danny had sent the Mernotaur calming images of the ocean the night before, Skulker transmitted a feeling of pure rage to Danny. **You will rue the day you learned to speak!**

_The only day I'm ruing is the day we met._

Danny swam until Skulker's heartbeat was far behind him. He zigged. He zagged. And as the sun rose above the waves, its light cancelling out Danny's betraying glow, he was able to disappear into his surroundings.

But Danny was still recovering from his battle at the town hall. His adrenaline rush was fading, and all of the aches and bruises from the night before were rearing their ugly heads. There was no doubt in his mind that Skulker was still following him, but he wasn't going to be able to swim much further, not in his current, less-than-ideal condition. He needed to hide.

Soon enough, Danny came upon a wide, jagged plain of rocks rising out of the seabed. It was filled with hollows, overhangs, and twisting arcs of dark gray and black stone where fish and shrimp were making their homes. Luckily for Danny, some of the nooks and crannies were big enough for him to hide in.

He chose a deep, horizontal hole in the surface and shimmied inside, scaring out several of its inhabitants in the process. He turned so that he was laying on his back, his head pointed toward the entrance, and gulped in water.

In the ocean, it seemed like detecting other creatures was a lot harder than on land. Out in the air, bodies were basically big balloons of water wandering around, and sensing them was no problem. But down here, they blended in, the outlines of their flesh were fuzzy, and while Danny could perceive a thousand heartbeats surrounding him, he couldn't be sure what any of them belonged to. Right now he could feel several louder, stronger heartbeats in the area, but they could have belonged to dolphins or sharks or scuba divers for all he knew.

He only hoped Skulker would have the same difficulty pinpointing him as he was having pinpointing Skulker.

One of the heartbeats drifted close, and Danny held his breath. Then its owner swam away. Again, a second time.

After the third one passed by, Danny started to calm down. Maybe he'd really lost the hunter.

Then the fourth shape stopped somewhere above his hollow. It lingered there. And all of a sudden, the rock around Danny shuddered violently as a heavy force pounded into it from above.

**Come out, come out, my little** _ **abomination**_ **,** Skulker called.

Pebbles rained down on Danny's face, knocked loose out of the rock. There was a dull crack, and a larger chunk dropped onto his tail. Danny's eyes widened. Skulker was forcing him to swim out into the open. Staying put meant he would be buried alive.

Danny thrust himself out of the hollow just as the structure started to collapse entirely. Through the floating bloom of rock debris, Danny was smashed down against the seafloor, pinned under a heavy weight of semi-solid water.

**I told you there would be no escape** , the hunter gloated, gliding down to his trapped prey. Hovering over Danny, he leaned in close and bared his fangs in relish. **Would you like to know why they call me the ocean's greatest hunter?**

**Why not?** grunted Danny, unable to move a single one of his muscles that were straining for freedom. **I'll bite. Why do they call you that?**

**It's because of my unique appodido,** he explained, as though Danny knew what that meant. **I don't just track my prey; I track their** _ **essence**_ **, the invisible energy at their core that is the source of their life and powers.** As he said this, Skulker pressed one of his black claws into the skin just above Danny's sternum, presumably the location of his 'essence', releasing a thin stream of blood into the water. Danny could only grimace.

**You wouldn't know that your essence has been leaving a convenient trail for me to follow - straight back to its source. I'm not sure where you disappeared to these past few weeks, whelp, but now that you're here in my sights, you will never get away again.**

That was reassuring. Really.

**What did I ever do to you?** Danny demanded angrily. He had seen the guy all of one time before now. Giving Danny this kind of treatment after that brief encounter a few weeks ago seemed a little excessive.

**Your existence is an insult to all of Merkind! For that, you must die.**

_I know I'm a freak,_ thought Danny, _but is that really a good enough reason to want to kill me?_

_Oh, right. He probably still thinks I'm one of Vlad's experiments - and a spy._

**Wait!** Danny called out. **Before you do anything rash - I've got to speak with the Empress! It's about the Siren King!**

Skulker's eyes widened, and his entire demeanor darkened like a hurricane. **So you** _ **are**_ **working for him!**

**Not in a million years!** retorted Danny. **I want to kick his tailfin!**

That gave Skulker pause… but for only a second. **Feh. Chum like you would say anything to save your skin. Me, I think those black and white scales of yours would make a nice decoration for my chambers.**

Danny blinked a few times, letting the words sink in, processing them. Then he exclaimed, **And you call** _ **me**_ **an abomination? Did you seriously just say you want to use my skin for wallpaper? What kind of sicko are you?**

**The kind who ends all of his hunts… victoriously.** Well, at least he didn't deny he was a sicko. That sort of self-awareness was the first step to recovery.

Speaking of the sicko, Skulker appeared to be done chatting and was now fashioning a spear of water with his hydrokinesis - not like the spear Danny had made while fighting the giant octopus, but an actual weapon with defined and deadly edges.

The hunter raised one hand into the air like a gesture, which the weapon obediently followed, hovering over Skulker's shoulder and aimed directly at Danny's head.

Danny gulped in alarm and managed to make a small shield over himself just in time to avoid being skewered. The spear glanced off of Danny's hydrokinetic barrier and sliced a nearby rock in two.

Skulker's eyes narrowed and he prepared himself for the next attack - this time, with _two_ death spears. And this time, Danny didn't have a chance to fashion any protection; instead, he shoved his hydrokinesis outward indiscriminately in all directions.

The hunter was knocked backwards several feet in a plume of sand, and his hold over Danny was broken. But it seemed he had retained one of his spears, which he was now slashing heatedly toward Danny.

Danny dodged one swipe, and the next, but the third slash of the spear sliced his left arm and the next his tail.

Danny was staggered at the blows, could barely comprehend the fiery pain of his torn flesh; if he'd had a voice he would have screamed. It was worse than anything he'd ever felt, worse than any other hit he'd taken in his fights. But he didn't have time to reflect on this. The next hit that landed could be the last.

Terrified, Danny blasted his hydrokinesis into the sand in front of Skulker, causing it to explode into a dense cloud. Behind this cover, Danny swam away.

_He can track your essence_ , Danny's brain reminded him frantically. _So think, Fenton,_ think! _How can you get away from a guy who can follow merpeople literally anywhere?!_

He wouldn't even have to track Danny's essence, at this rate, not with the blood streaming into the water behind him in a crimson trail.

Danny did the least he could, which was to slap two solid patches of water over his wounds. And then he kept swimming.

After a few more minutes, his muscles were screaming at him to stop, and the cuts on his arm and tail were throbbing. He was on his last legs, as it were, when an idea suddenly occurred to him:

_He can track a_ mer _person's essence… but what about a regular person's?_

It was a long shot. If Danny was wrong, he would be dead. But at this point, he was willing to try anything.

Embracing his doom, Danny stopped. Carefully, he pushed all of the water surrounding him away, causing his now-dry body to revert back to human form. It took all of his mental strength to do this; the pressure bearing against the walls of his air bubble was enormous.

Despite his hatred for the creep, it was at times like these Danny couldn't help but marvel at Vlad's mastery of his powers. Everything he had pulled off at the beach party - the tsunami wave, that column of water turned rocket-launcher, and being able to keep Danny's mom suspended in an air bubble like it was nothing - it was amazing what twenty years of experience could do.

That, and who knows how many merfolk hearts consumed.

Right now, it would be all Danny could do to keep up this bubble for a couple of minutes. He hoped it would be enough.

Danny directed his bubble into the sand among the seagrasses. Constricting it around himself until it sat no more than an inch off of his skin, he lay down and burrowed shallowly into the sand with his hydrokinesis, burying himself.

And he waited.

His breath was loud in his ears, bouncing off of the barrier in front of his face, and vaguely he wondered how much oxygen was inside of this bubble anyway. How long until he ran out of air? How long until his hydrokinesis ran dry? How long until Skulker found him and drove a spear into his vital organs and used his corpse to decorate his bedroom?

He sensed a heartbeat appear above him and stop. It hung there for a long time.

Then, a telepathic scream of rage battered against the walls of Danny's skull. It nearly broke Danny's concentration - but only nearly. After releasing his yell, Skulker swam away, and continued swimming, until he was too far distant for Danny to keep track of.

Sighing, Danny released his bubble. The water rushed to fill the space around him, twisting his body back into merform.

For a long time, Danny just lay there, amazed to be alive.

* * *

Standing in the Fentonworks kitchen, Maddie put her cellphone down onto the counter with trembling hands. Never in her life had she expected to file a missing person's report. Especially not for one of her own children.

After losing the merboy and his pet monster the night before, Maddie and her husband had returned to the town hall to make sure everyone was okay - and in Jack's case, to blather on about how successful the forum on the threat of merpeople had been:

"You people wanted to know if the Merfolk are dangerous? Well, you can bet your sweet bippies they are! And now you know just how dangerous they can be! This is why we have to go out there and hunt the beasts, 'cause if we don't, they're going to come _here_ and hunt _us_!"

Maddie, before tending to anyone else, had gone straight to her daughter, Jazz, who was sitting in a chair against one wall, holding a hand to her head and staring blankly into the floor. Her hair was tangled and matted with dried blood.

"Jazz," said Maddie, dropping to a kneel in front of her. "Are you alright? Are you hurt?"

"Uh… huh?" Jazz blinked and looked up at her mother. She shook her head, brushing her fingers against the blood. "No, I'm fine. This is just from the leeches. Sorry, I feel a bit…"

"They're taking people to the hospital. Would you like to go, too?"

"No, I think I'll be okay." Jazz tried to smile, but the result was more of a grimace. "Mostly I want to take a long hot shower and go to bed."

"Of course, honey. We'll get you home soon." Looking around the room, Maddie asked, "Have you seen Danny?"

"To be honest, Mom, I don't remember anything since yesterday morning. I haven't seen him here, though. I looked as soon as I woke up."

After that, Maddie and Jack had been waylaid by the Mayor, news reporters, paramedics who wanted to know just how they were supposed to treat victims of mind-controlling leeches, and a crowd of angry citizens demanding explanations, not only for what had happened but why the Fentons hadn't stopped it sooner. It was several hours before Maddie, irritated and exhausted, had stated that they needed to go home to take care of their own family, who had also been hurt that night.

They had arrived at Fentonworks to find it dark and empty. After searching thoroughly for Danny and calling his phone, only to be sent straight to voicemail, the first needlings of fear had appeared in Maddie's gut. She and Jack had put Jazz to bed, and Jack stayed behind to make sure there wouldn't be any complications or aftereffects of the leeches, while Maddie drove to Danny's friends' houses to look for him.

At the Foleys', Tucker, who was by himself, had told her that Danny was at Sam Manson's house.

At the Mansons', Sam, who was also by herself, had told Maddie that Danny was at Tucker's.

Maddie didn't know if it was a cover-up instigated by her son or if his friends thought they were helping him by acting like he was fine. Either way, he was nowhere he should have been, and no matter how Maddie raged at the girl, Sam would not or could not tell Maddie where he was.

Collapsing numbly behind the wheel of their SUV in the Mansons' driveway, Maddie had made the call to her husband to inform him that their son was missing. After searching for him the entire night, she made the same call to the police.

"Maddie, my dear," said Vlad. He approached her from behind and put two gentle hands on her shoulders. "I am certain the boy is safe. You needn't worry so."

"I 'needn't worry so'?" Maddie snapped, pulling away and turning to glare at the millionaire. "I don't _know_ where my _son_ is. There was just an attack! He could be _dead!_ So don't you tell me I don't need to worry. Instead why don't you do something useful?" She pointed her finger at the door and demanded, "Go out and look for him!"

"Surely someone needs to stay here in case he returns home? And to look after Jasmine?"

"Yes, and that someone is me," she snarled. "Jack is out there right now looking everywhere for Danny. Do the same. Or what's the point of having all of your resources if you're not even willing to use them when it matters?

"I never said I wasn't willing to help, dear Maddie. I merely wanted to make sure that _you_ were okay."

"I'll be okay when someone brings my son home."

"And that was all you had to say. Consider it done."

Vlad strode toward the front door in his polished, pristine shoes, pulling a phone from his suit pocket and dialing someone. As he left, he muttered something under his breath. Maddie was not sure what he said, but to her it sounded like:

"Let the badger hunt begin."

* * *

Danny almost gave up then and went home. Nearly being killed twice in as many days really took it out of a person. All he wanted to do was curl up under the covers in his bed and sleep - for a week.

He also wanted to renew the vow he'd made to himself the last time he made this stupid trip, that he would never, ever come back to the ocean. For real this time. Sure, being in the water felt more natural than being on land at this point; he was willing to admit that. But the ocean certainly didn't seem to want him there. If it had, it would stop trying to kill him every time he went near it.

The only thing that kept Danny going now was the thought of facing Vlad again, seeing his smug and arrogant face and knowing that he had done absolutely nothing to stop him, while Vlad was not only doing everything he could to ruin Danny's life but _succeeding at it_.

Danny needed a victory - just one win - or he wouldn't be able to live with himself. If he stopped fighting, it was not just his life that would be forfeit, it was the lives of everyone he knew and cared about. He had promised Vlad that he would defeat him and expose him for the villainous creep he was. Danny didn't want to give up on that. He didn't want to admit defeat. He couldn't. Not to _him_.

So Danny picked himself off of the sandy floor and draggingly continued his journey to the Merfolk Empire.

His biggest obstacle right now, other than the lurking threat of Skulker reappearing for an encore, was finding the place. When he had escaped the Hold with Kaima, Danny hadn't been paying attention to where they were swimming from or how to get back. At the time, Danny had never planned on returning. He would have broken down in hysterics at the thought of doing something so obviously insane.

_Am I suicidal?_ he wondered, reflecting on the difference between himself then and now. The Danny Fenton back then seemed to have a lot more sense than the one now. _Or am I just an idiot?_

Either way, it didn't change the fact that he was doing this.

Danny knew of at least one way to find the Empire, although he was apprehensive of trying it. The last time he'd extended the senses of his water mode so far, he had nearly lost himself in it, until the shock of seeing that _thing_ in the depths wrenched him back to reality.

He hadn't forgotten the strange vision he'd had in the swimming pool, the night Sam had discovered him as Triton, but he had been willfully ignoring it. With everything else going on, it had been easy to shove the Creature from the Deep safely to the back of his mind.

Now that he was actually in the ocean and preparing to do a broad sweep of its depths, Danny couldn't help but remember. He still had no idea what it was or how it could possibly live in the cold, desolate darkness where Danny's senses had found it. He was sure of one thing, though - whatever it was, it was Evil. With a capital 'e'.

If Tucker had known about this thing, he would probably say it was Cthulhu.

...Aaand that was yet _another_ secret he had forgotten to mention to his best friend. Danny sure was off his game with his relationship skills lately. It wasn't enough that all of Amity Beach hated him now, his parents included, but he never could seem to do right by Tucker, who had been the one person by Danny's side for all of this. He was a friend Danny probably didn't deserve.

He shook his head. _Focus._ He would have plenty of time to make it up to Tuck later - if he survived. He had too many important things to be thinking about to let his mind wander.

Maybe he was suffering from blood loss. A glance at his wounds, however, let him know that his makeshift bandages were still in place.

That settled, it was time for him to get started. He reassured himself that it would be fine. He was a lot better at using his powers now than he was even a few days ago. There shouldn't be anything to worry about.

Danny began to tread the water with his arms and closed his eyes, focusing on his breathing and on the rhythmic movement of his arms through the water. He was reminded of the day he had gone with Sam to the cave to practice his hydrokinesis, and she had taught him how to meditate. He remembered how relaxed he had felt then and how in sync he had felt with her. The memory caused his heart to beat just a little faster and a smile to tug at the corners of his mouth. He wondered what she was doing now - and if she was worrying about him.

He was still wasting time; avoiding this. Letting thoughts of Sam drift away, Danny began to focus on the water around him. His senses extended at first like a net, gently taking in his surroundings, capturing the hundreds of fish and small organisms populating the rocks and grasses. His mind brushed against the hulls of several nearby boats, swept past a pod of dolphins, and began to run away from him like a snowball gaining momentum down a hill. Danny carefully reined it back in.

The pull the ocean was exerting on him reminded Danny of the gravitational pull of a black hole in outer space. He wasn't sure, but some instinct told him that if he wasn't careful, if he let himself be overwhelmed by the water's pull, he might not ever make it out again.

The thought of his body, floating in the middle of the ocean, stuck in merform as a vegetable, unnerved Danny so much that it actually became easier to control his water mode. That, or he really was getting better at it.

And there it was, maybe a dozen leagues away. Danny recognized the labryinthine trenches that snaked around the mountain range this side of the Hold, the hive-like cells of the prison, and past all of that, the glass spires of the Merfolk palace, teeming with fish and merpersons.

Opening his eyes, Danny let a small part of his awareness rest on his destination and started the long swim there.

It was afternoon by the time Danny reached the underwater mountain range, but the surface was so far above Danny's head that the water here was deep blue and full of shadows. Danny swam cautiously between the mountain peaks and pillars of stone, hiding whenever he sensed the heartbeat of a merperson sentry. Briefly, he wondered why they weren't picking up on his heartbeat. If he could sense them, surely they could sense him, too… right?

But he wasn't about to question Lady Luck if she had finally decided to smile on him. There was, after all, a limit to his idiocy.

In this way, Danny made the long and tedious journey into the heart of the Merfolk Empire. Avoiding the guards, he made it past the Hold, past the abandoned shipwreck, and to the palace itself.

Seeing it from a distance was nothing like seeing it up close. The palace, immense, seemed to jut out of the very bedrock of the earth, like it had been thrust out by the explosion of an ancient volcano and shaped to fit the needs of the people who lived there. Had it been on land, it would have defied gravity. It was a cluster of dozens of crystal towers that rose to impossible heights, tapering in sharp points far above Danny's head and collecting at the bottom into a single unit, like the root of a mushroom. Somehow - Danny had no idea how - the entire structure glowed, in all shades of the rainbow. Maybe it was lit from inside by the merpeople who lived there, or maybe it was just magic.

It was at times like these that Danny remembered that merfolk were _magic_. His parents had decoded that magic and turned it into science, but the powers that these creatures had to control water and communicate with their minds - that was magic, plain and simple.

There were hundreds of merpeople here, swimming in and out of the reaches of the palace and gathered around its base at what looked like a market. There, merchants were hawking their wares, calling out on a public channel of mind-speak. Merchildren of all colors zipped past in games of tag, squealing challenges at their friends. Mermen and mermaids in armor practiced using their hydrokinesis against each other in combat as a teacher called out commands. And all around the base of the palace, lit by its glow, seaweeds and seagrasses grew in wide fields, speckled with colorful flowers and teeming with schools of fish.

It was incredible. When Danny had thought about the Merfolk, he had never imagined something like this. Even after becoming half-merperson and spending so much time with Kaima, he had never imagined them as anything more than the dangerous creatures that his parents were hunting, who had made his life three hundred times more difficult. He had never imagined them as _people_.

And his parents wanted to destroy this?

Danny approached the palace cautiously, afraid someone would recognize him as the 'abomination' that had escaped several weeks ago. But none of the merfolk gave him a passing glance. To them, he was just another merperson - and a kid, no less. Why should they have been suspicious?

He swam over the crowd at the market to one of the palace entrances that seemed to be getting a lot of traffic. Trying not to draw attention to himself, he slipped inside.

From there, he spent several minutes swimming through bright glass tunnels that all looked identical and had infinite numbers of branches - up, down, left, right, diagonal. It was ridiculously complicated. Though he didn't want to, Danny was going to have to ask for directions if he was to have a hope of speaking to the Empress in this lifetime.

He spotted a pair of guards outside the entrance to one hallway. He could tell they were guards by the armor they wore and the way they swam stoically on either side of the doorway. In Doomed, guards were always the ones you needed to speak to in order to figure out where you were and what you needed to do next. It was video game logic, but if anyone should know where the Empress was and how to get an audience with her, it was palace guards, right?

Danny decided to approach them. **Excuse me,** he said, **I was wondering if you could tell me** -

That was as far as he got. As soon as the guards spotted him, they had looked at each other in alarm, turned back to him, and slammed him into the side of the corridor with a battering ram of water.

The next thing he knew, one of the guards was pulling his hands behind his back and slapping a pair of manacles over his wrists.

Suddenly, his water mode vanished. It was simply gone. Danny tried to use his hydrokinesis and couldn't even stir up some bubbles.

**You are under arrest for crimes against the Empire** , one of the guards informed him.

And that was how Danny found himself, once again, in Merfolk prison.


	27. Chapter 27

" _But one day, raising up his head and glancing at the sky above the lake, in the empty darkness Kandata saw a silver spider's thread being lowered from the ceiling so far, far away. The thread seemed almost afraid to be seen, emitting a frail, constant light as it came down to just above Kandata's head. Seeing this, Kandata couldn't help but clap his hands in joy. If he were to cling to this thread and climb up it, he may be able to climb out of Hell! Perhaps he could even climb all the way to Paradise!"_

Akutagawa Ryunosuke, "Kumo no Ito"

* * *

The cell was smaller, rockier, darker, and in all ways generally much more unpleasant than the last one. Danny assumed this was on purpose. He sat on the floor, hunched over due to the hydrokinesis-blocking manacles trapping his hands behind his back, glaring at the wound on his tail that was oozing blood into the water like little starbursts of darkness in the poorly lit chamber. The manacles chafed his wrists, the position of his arms tugging painfully at the cut near his left shoulder. It, too, had not stopped bleeding.

It had come to Danny's attention that he was probably going to die, and soon. He felt it with the same certainty he had felt when staring down the barrel of his parents' gun, and he knew it would take a similar sort of miracle to save his life. Danny was also pretty certain he had met his quota for miracles. He must have mistaken Lady Luck's expression earlier for a smile, instead of what it really was - a hateful, knowing smirk. He was only left to wonder how the Merfolk Empire executed the Siren King's spies. Would they go with an obvious choice, like beheading, or something more diabolical, like throwing him to live sharks, which they surely had easy access to?

Then again, he might bleed out first. He hadn't realized before how badly Skulker injured him. It was so bad he could taste the blood on the water every time he breathed.

It had either happened on the journey to the Hold or shortly after the guards had dumped him there, that Danny had given up on the goal of speaking with the Empress and resigned himself to, well, dying. Sure, he had told them that he needed to speak to the Empress, that it was urgent, a matter of life and death, that the whole kingdom was in danger - the lot of good that had done. His guards had told him to shut up and stop trying to feed them lies, had accused him of insulting the Empress's intelligence if he thought she would fall for such an obvious trick. They still saw him as the Siren King's spy. His pleas fell on deaf brains. No matter what he said, they didn't and wouldn't believe him.

His anger at Vlad - the one thing that had kept him going earlier, when he had been ready to give up and go home - it was gone; in its place, an empty feeling of despair and cold dread for whatever came next. He had gotten knocked down so many times now, and it would seem he had finally, finally, learned his lesson, that he was fighting a fight he could not win.

His death, he figured, staring bitterly into a corner of his cell - his death would just be the punctuation mark at the end of this, his most recent list of failures. Not only had Vlad defeated him, he had managed to turn him into Public Enemy Number One in the eyes of Amity Beach; now, thanks to his capture, Danny's parents were going to destroy the only creatures capable of stopping the sirens, and Vlad's army of horrors would be free to wreak havoc across the earth. All because Danny couldn't even deliver a simple message.

What had he expected? At the end of the day, Sam was right. He was still just Danny Fenton, loser extraordinaire. Thinking he could be a hero was nothing more than a delusion.

Geez. He was just fourteen. What had he _expected_? That because he was the 'good guy', that he deserved to win? Yeah, right.

Nothing had changed since the last time he had been in these cells. Nothing at all.

_It couldn't have lasted anyway,_ he reasoned, in some half-hearted attempt to comfort himself. What kind of life would he have lived as a half-fish freak? Had he not died now, he would have died eventually, probably on someone's lab table, maybe his parents'. Tucker and Sam would be revealing his secret to them when Danny inevitably did not come back, but at least this would spare them the embarrassment of seeing their son's horrible deformity up close and personal. The world's foremost merhunters, and their own son one of the enemy? For shame!

Danny blinked sluggishly. He was just so _tired_. His wounds from the town hall, the gashes from the fight with Skulker - his body felt like one big bruise. He couldn't tell where one ache ended and another began. Without his water mode, too, it felt like he had been deprived of one of his essential senses, like someone had snatched away his ability to hear or turned his body numb. The world had contracted to this small hole in a maze of a dungeon at the bottom of the ocean.

He closed his eyes.

...

It wasn't until someone spoke to him that he realized he had forgotten to open them again.

**You're the hybrid**.

Danny flinched at the deep voice in his head. Opening his eyes and turning to the aquatic bars of his cell, Danny saw a portly merman on the other side of them. He was vaguely familiar, but it might have had to do with all of the orange; it was hard to see the color without being violently reminded of Jack Fenton's wetsuit.

**What?** said Danny blearily.

**Kaima's hybrid** , said the newcomer, smiling even while his vermillion eyes were firm, calculating. His glow shone into the cell with the warm color of a campfire. **Able to move between worlds, to both walk on the land and swim in the sea.**

**You know Kaima?** Danny's pelvic fins fluttered anxiously.

**I do,** affirmed the orange merman.

Danny struggled to turn toward the merman, the cut on his arm stinging at the movement. **Where is she? I need to talk to her!**

The bars of the cell disappeared and the merman crowded inside. With his girth, the cavity barely accommodated both him and Danny. **I'm afraid that's not possible** , he said. **She is currently in her chambers under guard. Not surprising, after your last jailbreak.** Was that... a wink? Did he seriously just _wink_ about Danny's escape, like Danny and Kaima had pulled one over on the Empire, no harm done and all in good fun? Just who was this guy?

**Who are you?** Danny demanded.

**Daru,** said the merman, bowing his head and extending both his arms and pelvic fins to either side. A bag made of woven seaweed sagged forward around his hip, the strap sliding across his shoulder. **Royal Alchemist, at your service. I am here to tend to your wounds.**

Dumbfounded, Danny watched as Daru pulled a small metal box from his bag, and from that, a thin, curved, and sharp-looking piece of bone, along with a spool of fishing line. It took Danny's brain a few seconds to piece the situation together, namely that he wasn't going to bleed to death (at least not anytime soon) and that Daru intended to _use_ those dubious tools on Danny.

**Uh-huh,** said Danny, eyeing the bone. It had a hole bored into one end of it, through which Daru was threading the fishing line. While Danny had never needed stitches before, he was pretty sure fishing line was probably thicker than what doctors typically used. **Why?**

**They are quite serious, and as long as those lacerations are exposed to the water, with no pressure applied, they will keep bleeding.**

**Yeah, that wasn't really what I was asking.**

Daru, the Royal Alchemist, bent over the gash on Danny's tailfin, his long mustaches drifting through the water around him. Danny imagined, if he were to change back to human form right now, the cut would be midway down his right thigh, and yeah, it was pretty serious. That was why he didn't protest when merman began to suture it closed.

...Okay, he protested a bit. What could the guy expect? Stitches, without anything to numb it? It _hurt_.

**Your abilities seem to have developed since last we met.**

**Have… we met?** The mindspeak took an extra effort when most of Danny's mental capacity was taken up with the _burning pain_ in his tail. He had squeezed his eyes shut, clenched his teeth together, and was burying his face in his shoulder.

**I was at your original 'trial'.**

He must have been referring to that terrifying interrogation when Danny had been chained to the deck of the old ship outside the Hold. **I don't remember seeing you there.**

**Yes, I'm sure you must have had a lot on your mind, at the time.**

Neither said anything else as Daru worked on Danny's tail. Only when Daru had tied the last stitch could Danny rally himself for another question. **Was Kaima in trouble for helping me?**

Daru pursed his lips. **Her mother was not pleased, but she was not necessarily surprised. Kaima has a tendency to want to rescue creatures less fortunate than her.**

Oh. Well, that actually explained a lot.

**Generally not as large nor sentient as you are, but nonetheless. Kaima's freedom has been somewhat restricted since your grand escape.**

Frowning, Danny tried not to let himself feel guilty for getting Kaima in trouble with her mother or overly disappointed in the fact that he still wouldn't be able to ask her about the _how_ of his transformation, i.e. whether or not it had involved the eating of a merperson's still-beating heart. His situation was at rock bottom, literally. He needed to focus on the things he could achieve, no matter how few they currently were.

Danny squinted at the orange merman across from him, and suddenly his memory clicked into place. **You helped us! You gave us that stuff to put out our lights!**

Daru raised a brow at Danny meaningfully. **I'd appreciate you keeping that between the two of us.**

**Can you help me? I need to speak to the Empress! Please - it's important!**

**Right now** , said the Alchemist, **I can help you by closing the wound on your arm.**

Danny shrugged his shoulder out of Daru's reach, turning it toward the rocky wall of his cell. _**Please**_ **. I think a lot of people are going to get hurt.** He stared earnestly, desperately, at Daru, the green of his eyes flashing brightly in the dim.

**Your people, or mine?** asked Daru.

**Does it matter?** said Danny, scowling.

**It will to the Empress.**

Danny's eyes roamed over Daru's face, searching his expression for some clue that this merman could be trusted. The Alchemist may have been Danny's only ally in the whole ocean outside of Kaima, his last chance as salvaging the mess of this hopeless situation. But was Daru here because he was altruistic, or was he here for Kaima's sake? That would make all the difference in how far his help might extend.

**Both,** said Danny finally. **So? Can you get me in to talk to her?**

**I'll see what I can do…** Daru hummed.

Not the most inspiring promise. Still, Danny went ahead and let Daru tend to his arm. The pain, this time, was even more biting than on his tail.

As he worked, Daru prodded him with questions Danny had no interest in answering.

**I see you have mastered our way of speaking,** the Alchemist noted, **and you must be proficient at swimming now, to have escaped Skulker. Has any hydrokinesis manifested itself?**

At Danny's skeptical glance, Daru explained, **Hydrokinesis being the ability to move the water around you with the power of your mind alone.**

**I know what it is** , said Danny.

Daru must have interpreted Danny's reticence as a denial. He moved on. **Perhaps some other ability, even an appodido?**

**An apo-what-now?**

**Appodido** , Daru repeated. **It is an ability unique to any given merperson. For example, Skulker has the ability to track a merperson's essence across any distance, while his partner Reever can release a paralyzing venom from barbs in his wrists - a much more common appodido than Skulker's.**

Danny nodded, remembering how Skulker had boasted about this power before. **Does everyone have one of these?**

**They do not,** said Daru. **Very few, indeed, possess an appodido.**

Danny considered this. Vlad obviously had the one with the wrist barb venom, besides having ridiculously powerful hydrokinesis and who knew what else. Danny, meanwhile, couldn't think of anything about his own powers that would count as unique.

**I don't think so,** he said after a moment.

**Well,** said Daru, **the fact that you have adapted as well as you have is impressive on its own. If I didn't know better, it would have been impossible to tell you apart from any other merperson.**

**Uh… thanks?**

Daru tied the last knot on Danny's arm. **There. Done.**

Relieved that it was finally over, Danny glanced at his shoulder. The normally white, pearlescent skin of his merform was dull, reddish, and swollen underneath the row of blue twine that held it in one piece. On his tail, the stitches mostly blended into his scales, but while the gash had become invisible, the pain wasn't letting itself be forgotten any time soon. Both the wounds and the punctures from the suture throbbed in time with his heartbeat and felt oppressively hot.

Daru replaced the bone hook and twine in the box, before pulling out a small packet made of seaweed that fit neatly in the palm of his hand. He held it up to Danny's face. **Open up.**

**It's medicine,** he added in response to Danny's questioning look. **Something to help with the pain and boost your body's natural resistance to infection.**

**You want me to eat it?** said Danny, curling his nose up.

Daru's mouth twitched into a smile. **Yes, that is the idea.**

Reluctantly, Danny opened his mouth and let the packet be wedged between his teeth. He bit down tentatively, feeling whatever was wrapped up in the seaweed crack and pop. A salty, bitter flavor seeped out.

**It's better to chew it up quickly than try to savor it,** Daru added, winking again.

**Noted,** said Danny and did just that, gagging only a little. He swallowed as soon as he was sure he wouldn't choke on it and swallowed several more times to get the taste out of his mouth before he realized his tongue had gone curiously numb.

Across from him, the Alchemist's expression was again solemn. **I will speak with Birghid. I cannot promise she will agree to listen. But I will speak with her.**

**Thank you,** said Danny. He forced himself to smile. **For everything.**

**I hope it's enough,** replied the Alchemist. At some unknown cue to the guards outside - or maybe it was Daru himself who did it - the hydrokinetic bars dissolved, releasing the orange merman from the cell. **Whatever happens next, you will need your rest.**

And then Danny was alone. Relieved, he took a deep breath of the stagnant water in his cell and felt it pushed out over his gills. Once again, he had a strand of hope to hold onto. Daru was going to pass his message along, and as soon as Danny spoke with the Empress, everything would be okay. Things would finally work out the way they were supposed to. With the help of the Merfolk Empire, he would find a way to stop Vlad after all. He had to keep grasping at that thought. He couldn't let himself fall back into despair; he had already come dangerously close to that abyss.

As he sat huddled in the jail cell, wondering how long it would take for Daru to speak to the Empress, a strange drowsiness began to overtake him. It started as a feeling of warmth in his stomach and slowly uncurled over his limbs, melting his muscles and easing the pain out of his cuts and bruises. His eyelids began to slip.

Shaking his head, Danny realized something in Daru's pain meds was trying to put him to sleep. He didn't want to sleep, though, couldn't afford to. He needed to be… needed to…

Danny slumped onto his right side on the floor, which suddenly didn't seem so rocky. It cradled his heavy head like the softest of pillows.

At that point consciousness stopped being an option.

* * *

Tucker made his way up the darkened beach. His shoes were full of sand, but it was the sort of thing you got used to when your best friend's backyard was literally made of the stuff. To his right, the black ocean waves lapped at the beach, the sound of the waves a soft, constant roar.

He trudged through the sand, along where the beach narrowed and hugged the side of the cliff. Rounding one last corner, he wasn't surprised to find Sam Manson sitting on a blanket in front of Fort Tucker. She didn't do much more than glance up at the sound of his approach, so she must not have been surprised to see him either.

"Mind if I join you?" he said and then sat down on her blanket before waiting for an answer. Sam shrugged, scooting over a few inches to make more room. Tucker pulled his shoes off and began dumping the sand out of them.

They sat together side by side for several minutes, neither saying a word, both staring out at the ocean, toward the last place they had seen Danny. Behind them in the cave, his bag sat untouched, exactly where they had left it that morning.

"Did the cops talk to you?" Tucker asked. He was never good with awkward silences. Talking made him feel better.

Sam nodded. Her arms were wrapped around her legs, chin resting on her knees.

"What did you tell them?"

The girl hugged her knees more tightly. "That I hadn't seen him since the beginning of the town hall meeting. Like we lost each other in the chaos. You?"

"Something like that. They kinda grilled me about why we were covering for him to Mrs. F. I just said that I didn't want him to get in trouble."

"Yeah, same."

Tucker sighed. He pulled his glasses off of his face and rubbed his eyes. He hadn't slept since Thursday night, and he was feeling it. He was so tired, he hadn't even been hungry for dinner, and he was _always_ hungry for dinner. "We need to get better at our cover stories. I mean, that fell apart fast, and now Danny's going to be in deep, deep trouble when he gets back. His parents are _freaked_."

Sam curled deeper into her knees, like she was trying to make herself as small as possible. "I hate that this is going to be a regular thing. Danny doesn't deserve this."

The technophile nodded. "I'm really starting to feel like we're out of our depth… er, no pun intended."

"Good, otherwise I would be punching you in the face right now."

"Yep, got it, no puns," he said quickly. "Wouldn't dream of it! I'm just saying… we really need to step up our game if we're going to be a part of Team Triton."

"Team Triton?" echoed Sam.

"Yeah," said Tucker. "Even though Danny's obviously doing all the heavy lifting here, we're still a team. You and me are the only people he can rely on right now, so we're going to have to do a better job of supporting him from here on out."

Sam stared at Tucker for several seconds, frowning at him in confusion like he had grown two heads. "How can you be so optimistic, after everything that's happened?"

He shrugged and grinned. "I don't know. Maybe 'cause Danny's always been so pessimistic about everything. If I didn't balance him out, our friendship would have imploded into a ball of self-loathing and paranoia years ago. I love Danny to death, but one thing I can't call the guy is 'chipper'."

Sam snorted, and Tucker's smile grew; he was relieved to see her relaxing a little. He knew she was still blaming herself for what had happened to Danny at the town hall, and he also knew how dangerous it was to feel that way. Tucker had been unsure of the girl at first, but he was quickly coming to see that Sam was good for Danny. He needed her support as much as he needed Tucker's, so they couldn't have her bailing out over guilt.

"How's your mom?" asked Sam. She had loosened her grip on her knees.

"She's alright, just kind of shaken up." He chuckled. "Pops made her stay in bed all day and pampered her, and that drove her nuts."

Sam laughed softly. "Your parents sound nice."

"Yeah, they're definitely keepers. How about your parents? Are they okay?"

And like that, the little bit of Sam's good mood was gone. "Don't know," she said, scowling, "don't care."

"Ah," said Tucker, for lack of anything better.

The two companions went back to staring at the water in silence. Tucker started drumming a rhythmless beat on his thighs.

"Uh, so…" he hemmed. "Can I, uh, have your phone number?"

Sam stared at him. "What?"

Tucker cleared his throat, feeling his face heat up. He was glad it was dark, so Sam wouldn't see him blushing - though why he was blushing in the first place, he had no idea. It wasn't like he was asking a girl for her number. Sam _was_ a girl, of course she was, but she wasn't a _girl_ girl. "Your phone number," he repeated, pulling his own phone out of his pocket. "So, like, we can get our stories straight next time we have to cover for Danny."

"Oh, sure," she said, taking out her own phone. "Can't believe we haven't done this yet." They traded numbers, and Tucker went ahead and set up a group chat for the three of them.

Tucker stayed at the beach for about another hour, watching for Danny and keeping Sam company. Finally, though, his pops called him and asked him to come home. Stiff, bottom feeling numb, he climbed to his feet and told Sam 'bye'.

He had no idea how long she stayed at Fort Tucker that night, until the next morning when he saw a text from her, timestamped for 7:58 A.M: _He still hasn't come back._

Meaning Sam had waited for Danny the whole night.

But he was still gone.

Tucker tried not to panic. He thought about the last time Danny had made this journey, how Danny had left early on a Saturday morning and hadn't gotten home until late Sunday afternoon. It was a long way to swim, clearly. So it wasn't time to panic. No. Not yet.

Tucker watched the clock obsessively that entire day, and then it was afternoon, and then it was evening, and then his parents were going to bed, and not a word from Danny.

Fear was beginning to grip Tucker's heart like an icy hand. He sat on his bed in the dark, unable to sleep, staring at the dark screen of the phone in his hand.

"Danny," he whispered. "Where the hell are you, man?"

* * *

The audience with Her Imperial Majesty, Empress Birghid of the Merfolk, was short, cold, and exponentially more frightening than Danny had expected it to be.

He had been roughly jostled awake the next day by his guards. Two of them, gripping one of his arms apiece, dragged him along while a third followed behind, aiming a harpoon threateningly at Danny's back. Danny - groggy from Daru's medicine, hungry, muscles stiff, battered with bruises, his stitched wounds swollen and throbbing - winced a whole lot but otherwise went along with this. What choice did he have?

The guards hadn't offered him an explanation about their destination, even when he asked. So, Danny was left to assume that either Daru had succeeded, in which case Danny was about to see the Empress, or Daru had failed, in which case Danny would not be seeing very much of anything ever again.

Mentally, he prepared for the first scenario. It probably wouldn't help to dwell on the second.

The guards brought Danny out of the labyrinthine Hold into the open water. The sun was shining far above them, though its light was greatly diminished in the murky depths of the Empire's territory. This was Danny's first clue that some time had passed; it had definitely been afternoon when he first got here, and there was no way it would still be this bright out if it were the same day.

Some distance away, the beautiful crystal spires of the Merfolk palace gleamed with that same curious luminescence as always. But that was not where the guards were taking him. Veering in another direction, they pulled Danny towards a familiar, if much less welcome, landmark - the wrecked freighter where he had first been questioned by the Empress. As they drew nearer, Danny could make out the glowing forms of at least a dozen merpeople gathered on the deck.

**All this for little 'ol me?** he joked weakly. The guard at his right lifted his lip in a snarl; apparently he didn't think Danny was very funny.

The closer they swam to the deck, the more that Danny could make out the identities of the merpeople. The different colors of their auras helped immensely in this. For instance, the orange merman could only be Daru, while the huge dark blue one and the smaller silver one floating side by side were probably Skulker and Reever, respectively.

And the merperson with the brightest aura of them all, gelid white, was the Empress.

Danny gulped. It looked like he would get to speak to Birghid after all.

The guards brought Danny down onto the deck of the old ship and proceeded to clamp the iron band around his waist. The manacles that blocked his hydrokinesis were still firmly locked on his wrists. If Danny hadn't been so terrified, he would have felt flattered that they thought he was powerful enough to deserve all of these precautions.

The other occupants of the deck eyed him with suspicion and distaste, all but for the Royal Alchemist, whose expression was pitying, and Skulker, whose face was the embodiment of the phrase 'if looks could kill'.

Danny ignored all of them. Kneeling on the deck, his tail folded under him despite the way it tugged against his stitches, Danny turned his attention to the one person he had come all this way to see.

Empress Birghid was just as imposing as the first time he saw her, if not more so. She wore a similar outfit - the same blue plastic breastplate and cape of woven seagrasses - but now her bright blue hair was worn loose, and it flowed through the water around her like a tempest. In her right hand was a long trident of black metal. Her blue eyes bore down on Danny, and her lips were poised upon a snarl.

Danny began. **Your Majesty-**

**You presume to address me?** The Empress's upper lip curled, exposing her fangs. **You will speak when spoken to,** _ **mongrel**_ **.**

Danny flinched, and he shivered. Somehow her words were backdropped by the feeling of glaciers and ice shelves, of frozen wastelands and howling winds. The water that had once been refreshing to Danny's aches was now oppressively cold.

Smoothly, Birghid swam up to Danny, tail curling through the water, until she was only a few feet away. She glared down her nose at him and narrowed her eyes. **Why have you come here?**

Danny swallowed heavily. He had a sense of deja vu, of another time when his life had depended on answering this mermaid's questions correctly. But he reminded himself that she was also Vlad's enemy, an opponent the Siren King had not been able to defeat, and that formidability was exactly the reason Danny had decided to seek her out in the first place. All he had to do was convince her.

**Your people are in danger,** he said cautiously. **I… I came here to warn you.**

Birghid's eyes narrowed to hateful slivers as her pelvic fins beat slow menace. **Your arrogance astounds me,** the Empress seethed. **You have no reckoning of the might of my people. What do you think could threaten us? What knowledge could a thing like you have that would be of any benefit to us? Days ago, your mind was mute and your misshapen body could not even swim. But you seek to warn me?**

**Yes,** said Danny. Anger pricked through the cold of his fear. He repeated - **Your people are in danger.**

**Let me guess,** she drawled. **The Siren King? Swim back to your maker, mongrel, and tell that pompous bastard to do his worst. The Merfolk do not fear him!**

On either side of them, the attending merpeople bared their fangs, clenched their fists, and glowed more brightly, tailfins thrashing in agitation.

**For the last time, I don't work for the Siren King!** Danny retorted, making sure his words went out to everyone present. But he did not take his glare off of Birghid. **I hate Plasmius! He is evil, and psychotic, and a complete nutjob! He needs to be stopped! So would you stop freaking lumping us together and** _ **listen to me?!**_

For a second, Danny was concerned that Birghid would stab her trident straight through his throat for that outburst and was taken aback when she said and did nothing but glower at him, an unspoken permission for him to say his part. He gathered himself, pulling out of his brain the explanation he had prepared earlier.

**Do you even know what Vlad is trying to do? About his plan to bring his sirens on land and kill all the humans? Conquering the ocean isn't enough, he wants to take over the whole** _**world** _ **. Empress, you are the only person he fears, the only one strong enough to stop him from doing this, so he's been paying the best merhunters in the world to build a submarine that can find your palace and destroy it. They are literally days away from completing it! The Fentons are going to come here and kill you, and then no one will be able to stop Vlad.**

Danny stared at Birghid earnestly, waiting for her reaction.

For a few seconds, she didn't react at all. Then the Empress closed her eyes. Her shoulders jerked once, then twice, her lips drawing into a smile, and Danny realized with a sinking feeling in his stomach that Birghid was laughing at him.

**You're laughing?**

When she looked back at Danny, Birghid's face was marginally softer. **I am laughing because you truly believe what you're telling us. It's so… amusingly naive.**

**What's naive about this?** Danny demanded, even as he could see his skin brightening in humiliation. _**Any**_ **of this?**

The Merfolk Empress grinned, and it was completely condescending. She bent down until her face was level with Danny's - glowing white skin, electric blue eyes, all framed by her swirling hair. **You think that a single** _ **human**_ **machine would be enough to bring down an Empire? Humans have sought us and opposed us for thousands of years, and will fail against us for thousands more.**

**But child, it's the rest of your logic that really makes me laugh. If these Fenton hunters are strong enough to defeat me and mine, yet this Empire is the only thing standing in Plasmius's way - well, you already have your solution, do you not? Petition these merhunters to kill the Siren King. Your problem is solved.**

Unease, bordering on panic, was swirling in Danny's gut. **It's not that simple!**

**Why not?** asked Birghid. The humor, what little there had been, was gone.

**Because they trust** _ **him**_ **and hate** _ **me**_ **!** exclaimed Danny. **Vlad's already succeeded in turning them against me. They wouldn't listen to me even if I tried. That's why I came here. I need your help.** _ **Please**_ **. You can stop him before he figures out how to get his people on land.**

Birghid stared at Danny, face inscrutable, hard eyes flicking back and forth across his face.

Then she gave her answer:

**If Vlad Plasmius wants to take on the surface dwellers, then all I can say is 'Good riddance.'**

Danny stared at the Merfolk Empress, appalled. ' **Good riddance?'** he echoed.

**Don't look so surprised.** Birghid grinned darkly. **Just because we Merfolk don't partake in the sirens' barbarism doesn't mean that we** _ **enjoy**_ **those two-legged parasites, who pollute our water with their wanton garbage, whose overfishing has put us on the verge of starvation** _ **countless**_ **times before. If Plasmius wants to purge some of them from the world, I give him my blessing. In fact, let them kill each other off. It would be like two trout with one spear.**

**But-** Danny started to argue.

**No,** said the Empress. **I have given you my answer, and I will not be questioned by the likes of you.**

_So that's it? That's all? Nothing? 'Good riddance'?_ Danny felt like he was going to be sick, or he would have been if he'd had anything in his stomach.

**Why do you care so much what happens to the humans?** Birghid asked him, frowning in puzzlement.

Danny, still in shock, spoke before he could really process what he was saying. **Because** _ **I'm**_ **human.**

It was the wrong thing to say.

Birghid physically recoiled away from him. In his periphery, Danny saw the attending merpeople looking at each other in horror, showing their fangs in disgust. Danny glanced around at them, confused. His eyes landed on Daru, but the Royal Alchemist would not look at him. He seemed extremely disappointed, almost pained, and was shaking his head.

_**How?**_ demanded the Empress, baring her fangs at him. **Was it the Siren King who did this to you?**

**No!** said Danny, still desperate to deny any tie to Vlad.

**Then** _ **how?**_ **What have you done?**

**I haven't…** he stammered. **I don't…**

Daru's voice slipped into his mind, and Danny somehow knew it was a private thought between them. **They think you are like Plasmius.**

_They know about Vlad?_ Danny's heart pounded in his ears. If they knew that Vlad was half human, if they knew that he had gotten his powers from consuming a siren's essence, then they must think -

**No…** he protested weakly, looking around at the merpeople who stared back at him with hatred etched on their faces. **I didn't. I wouldn't.**

**Defiler,** accused Birghid, blue eyes burning. **You truly are an abomination!**

Danny couldn't speak. He couldn't defend himself, not if doing so meant implicating Kaima, not when he wasn't sure that he _didn't_ do the horrible thing he was being accused of. He was frozen.

The Empress had drifted away from him, and now several of the Merfolk surrounded her - Skulker, Daru, others Danny could not name. A conversation was happening, but it was not one Danny was allowed to hear. Time seemed to lose all meaning as Danny waited on their verdict. And he was sure that was what they were talking about - what to do with him. The seconds - _minutes? hours?_ \- stretched on as he waited, waited-

Birghid's eyes were on him again, icy pools of contempt.

**You will leave here,** she pronounced slowly. **You will return to your world, and you will not dare to enter these waters again. The minute you do so, my hunter will know, and he will kill you, and he will do so with great cruelty and glee. This is the last of my mercy.** _ **You are not welcome here.**_

One of the guards from the Hold unlocked the iron band around Danny's waist and then the manacles from around his wrists. Danny pulled his hands around to his front and absently rubbed the sores on his right wrist, staring numbly at the decrepit deck.

Birghid's black trident cut into his vision, aimed at his chest. **Go** , she commanded. _**Now**_ **.**

Jarred into motion by the sudden appearance of the weapon, Danny flung out his arms and used his webbed hands to push himself backwards, upwards, into the open water, thrusting his tail as soon as he had room to do so.

With one last, despairing look at the company on the ship, Danny turned and swam as quickly as he could, away, away, away...

* * *

Danny was not sure how he made it home, but he did.

It had been dark for several hours when he finally dragged himself onto the beach outside the cave. He lay on the sand in his mer-form for several minutes, staring blankly up at the stars, feeling the cold autumn air bite at his lungs. The waves washed his tail every few seconds, preventing it from drying off and turning back into legs.

A thought rose from Danny's numbed mind - this would be his last time in the ocean. Once his legs were back, they would be back for good. It was a strange, bittersweet realization.

Well... there was always the pool.

For whatever reason, that was the thought that broke him. Danny was too tired to begin trying to analyze it. Unable to make tears, a strangled whine wrenched its way out of Danny's chest. He gasped for air, sobbing and crying out, pressing his hands over his face, wishing that the next time he opened his eyes, he would be in his own bed, that this all would have been one long and drawn out nightmare.

The tips of his fangs grazed his palms. Their alien solidity became a single focal point for his awareness. He had fangs. This wasn't a dream. It wouldn't be a dream. Not when he had fangs that felt so real and so permanent.

Danny gasped for air, feeling like he was drowning, forgetting that he would never be in danger of drowning ever again. He curled up into a ball on his right side, hugging his tail to his chest, gasping, sobbing, choking on the air.

Eventually, even that was over. His breathing finally calmed, as his upper body dried off and became human again. Heavy with fatigue, Danny finished dragging himself out of the water with his arms and used his hydrokinesis to instantly transform his tail. His legs, in its place, looked pale and scrawny, like they would never be able to support his weight. The line of stitches on his thigh was starkly black in the nighttime.

Numb again, Danny stumbled to his feet. He brushed off the sand and took weak, staggering steps over to the cave. He noticed that he was dizzy, and that vaguely concerned him. When was the last time he had eaten? He didn't remember. How much had he slept in the last few days? He didn't know.

He found his backpack tucked away in the entrance of the cave, hidden but easy enough to find after fumbling around for it in the dark for a few seconds. He pulled out his jeans, his jacket, and his flip flops and put them on, ignoring the Fenton Wetsuit with the 'Triton' insignia on its chest that mocked him from inside the bag. The jacket and jeans scraped painfully at his stitches, on both his leg and his shoulder, but he would have to put up with it until he got home and found something to cover his wounds with. Maybe some ibuprofen, too. Lots of ibuprofen.

Sighing, he zipped the backpack shut, locking the suit away inside of it, and slipped the bag onto his back, only to take it off again a second later to look for his phone, which he found in a side pocket after a bit of rummaging.

The battery was dead. Go figure.

Frowning, Danny shoved his phone into his front pants pocket and replaced his backpack. Even with nothing more than the wetsuit and water bottles inside of it, it felt too heavy for his exhausted muscles and bruised back. He couldn't wait to get home and crawl into his bed and sleep for the next century. Danny hadn't known it was possible to be this tired and still be awake, but apparently it was.

Bracing himself for the long trek home, Danny turned and left the cave.

That was the moment things grew a thousand times worse.

"Daniel. Welcome back."

Danny froze, a chill trailing down his spine like the fingertip of a corpse. Slowly, he turned to face the owner of the voice. Leaning against the rock wall of the cliff, arms crossed easily over his chest and smirking in self satisfaction, was Vlad Masters.

Danny's jaw dropped open. His mouth worked, opening and closing, but could not find any words. He finally settled on, "How…?"

"How?" repeated Vlad, smugly, eyes twinkling in amusement.

Danny swallowed a few times. He couldn't do this. Why was Vlad here? Why now? He couldn't do this.

His next words were a croak: "How did you know I was here?"

Vlad stepped away from the cliff and sauntered forward. "Your parents buoys, of course."

Danny stared, not comprehending. He had forgotten about his parents' buoys, which would have immediately alerted his mom and dad when he swam underneath them. So why weren't they the ones here confronting him? What did that have to do with Vlad?

Vlad took Danny's silence for what it was, a total lack of understanding. He explained. "I've taken the liberty of reprogramming your parents' buoys. They still work perfectly, don't worry about that. However, instead of sending their alerts to your parents' computers, they send all of their data directly to me, and only to me. And when I saw that a merperson had swum toward the coast, here of all places, I knew it could only be my missing badger.

"So, Daniel… how was your little foray into the Merfolk Empire?"

"What are you talking about?" Danny denied, weakly. He knew playing dumb wouldn't work, not with Vlad. Still, he had to do something.

But he couldn't do this. Not now. Not _now_.

Vlad grinned. There was a predatory quality about it, even when his canines were a normal, human length. "Oh, once it became obvious you were missing, it was not hard to deduce your whereabouts, that you had gone running to that frigid imposter with your tail between your legs. Tell me, just how _sympathetic_ was Birghid to the plight of the humans? Hmm?"

"Screw you," snarled Danny, even while he despaired. Why had he thought he could pull one over on Vlad? Why had he thought it would work? Was he really so predictable?

"Now," the billionaire chortled, "is that any way to talk to your savior?"

"My _savior_?" Danny repeated incredulously.

"Yes, well, at least that's how your parents will see it. I, Daniel, am the one who will bring you home."

"Like hell you-"

"Ah, ah," said Vlad, waggling his finger at Danny, phone already in his other hand, dialing. "Wouldn't want anyone to hear you talking to 'dear old Vlad' that way, would we?" He held the phone to his ear, and a few seconds later he was saying, words dripping with syrupy sweetness, " _Maddie!_ "

Danny could do little more than gape as the conversation played out.

"Yes, I know it's late, my dear, but I assure you, it is _good_ news. I found him… Yes, yes, _really,_ he's here, he's with me right now… Up the beach from your house, in an old cave? Almost like he was using it as a hideout… yes, already on our way. See you soon! Ta!"

Tucking the phone away inside of his suit jacket, Vlad leered at Danny. "Your parents have been frantic the last two days looking for you. But how lucky they are to have me as a friend."

Danny was speechless, too tired, angry, and horrified to make a sound. Vlad's eyes swept over him, almost impatient. "Well, come along. Your parents will be waiting." With that, he pointed his pretentious shoes towards Fentonworks and strode away.

As much as he hated to comply with anything Vlad wanted him to do, Danny had no choice but to follow - to whatever was waiting for him at home.


	28. Chapter 28

_Disenchantment, whether it is a minor disappointment or a major shock, is the signal that things are moving into transition in our lives._

\- William Throsby Bridges

* * *

_Dear Diary,_

_Yeah, things have been rough lately, what with the mythological creatures attacking our town, my little brother disappearing to who-knows-where, and my parents being more ineffective than usual in their parenting techniques. If I could only get them to read_ _one_ _of my books on adolescent psychology! But you know how it is: unless it's got a mermaid on the cover, my parents aren't interested._

_So, once again, it's up to me to be the responsible adult around here. And when I say it's up to me, I mean, it's up to me. My parents have literally handed off their duties in raising one child to their other child._

Jazz stopped writing and pushed the top of her pen to the corner of her mouth, frowning bitterly at her memories of that morning, when Danny had finally come home.

She had woken up when she heard voices in the hallway and the pounding of feet down the stairs. Groggy, Jazz had peered at the clock on her bedside table. It was 2:13 A.M., _very_ early Monday morning.

Her half-asleep brain thought that going back to sleep sounded like a fine plan, especially since she would be getting up in less than four hours to go to school. But then one word leapt to the forefront of her mind, lit in neon lettering, and she was instantly wide awake.

 _Danny_.

Her little brother had officially been missing for two days. Jazz couldn't remember seeing him since Thursday morning. There was a huge gap in her memory, between a point when she was drifting aimlessly through the school day, as though in a dream - and then waking up at the town hall on Friday evening, in a pool of liquified mind-controlling leeches, blood streaming down the side of her head, surrounded by panicking and injured people. Danny hadn't been among them.

Jazz had looked for him as soon as she came to her senses. Later, she had scoured the news footage of that catastrophe for any glimpse of him in the crowd - past the footage of the half-fish monster and the merboy fighting each other, fighting the crowd, fighting her parents - and found nothing. And that was terrifying. It meant he could still be out there, that he could have been outside of the range of Mr. Masters's sonic wave device, still have a leech on his head, controlling his actions -

\- could have been dragged into the ocean by some sort of monster -

\- drowned -

\- eaten alive -

Heart thumping in her chest, Jazz got out of bed, put on her robe and house slippers, and went into the hallway.

All of the lights were on. The door to her parents' bedroom at the end of the hall was open and the bedroom itself empty. Frowning, Jazz went down the stairs, calling out, "Mom…? Dad…?"

The situation downstairs was the same, the house fully lit but empty. Anxious, Jazz sat on the sofa in the living room, chewing her lip and wringing her fingers, waiting for her parents to come back from wherever they had gone at two o'clock in the morning.

About twenty minutes later, she heard a mechanical hum from the kitchen, the familiar noise of the elevator ascending from the lab. She jumped to her feet, and soon her parents and Vlad Masters walked into the living room. Trailing behind them was -

"Danny!" Jazz cried. She rushed forward past the adults and wrapped her little brother in her arms.

"Oww, Jazz!" Danny complained. He immediately pushed her away.

Jazz looked him up and down, scrutinizing his appearance for any sign of harm. He was pale, there were dark circles under his eyes, and his hair was a mess, stiff and sticking up in all directions… but he didn't seem to be injured. Oddly, he was wearing a windbreaker, which was not a part of his usual ensemble, and carrying his backpack. Jazz's first impression was that he looked like a youth who had decided to run away from home.

Danny avoided meeting her eyes, hugging his arms across his chest and glaring off into one corner of the room.

"I'm more than happy to stay and assist," Mr. Masters was saying to their parents.

"Thank you, Vlad," said Maddie. "We appreciate everything you've done, we really do. But from this point on, I'm afraid this is more of a family matter."

Jack clapped the billionaire on the arm. "Go home and get some sleep, V-man. You've earned it!"

"Oh, very well," the man consented. He strode over to Danny and smiled at him; to Jazz, it seemed a little less than genuine. Mr. Masters reached out a hand. "Take care of yourself, Daniel. Wouldn't want to lose our little badger again, would we?"

Glaring coldly at Mr. Masters, Danny accepted the hand and they shook. The handshake was held for a second longer than necessary, a bizarre tension passing between the two of them through the shared gesture. Jazz briefly wondered what all that was about. But then Vlad Masters was leaving.

The front door closed behind him, and all that were left were the Fentons.

As a single unit, Jazz's parents turned from the door and leveled two very stern looks at their youngest child. Maddie pointed to the sofa. "Sit."

Danny glanced between his mom and dad, sighed his resignation, and trudged over to the sofa. He lowered himself down on the middle cushion, slinging his backpack to the floor between his feet, and sat there, slouched and frowning at the coffee table in front of him.

Jazz, not entirely sure where she ought to be in the middle of this tense atmosphere - but at the same time not wanting to leave - went to the armchair and stood next to it, gripping the top of it with one hand for support. Even though she knew she wasn't the one getting in trouble, as was obviously happening here with Danny, she could not help the feeling of anxiety coursing through her. It was the same feeling she got when her teachers yelled at her classmates. Jazz, who never did anything wrong, always felt like she was being scolded, too.

Maddie and Jack Fenton towered over Danny, arms crossed, eyes hard.

"Are you ready to tell us where you've been?" said Maddie.

Danny winced and slouched forward slightly more. He was curling into himself, something Jazz immediately recognized as a defensive posture. His forearms were resting on his knees, and he gripped his hands so tightly in front of him that his knuckles were turning white.

"Danny…" said Jack, tone threatening, just as Maddie deployed her secret weapon, the one that came out only when she meant business - the full name: "Daniel James Fenton."

Still Danny said nothing.

Jazz knew there must have been some sort of tearful reunion down on the beach, full of relief and gratitude. Then the inevitable questions would have begun, and it would seem that up to this moment Danny hadn't said a word.

His silence likely indicated guilt or fear. But what would he have to feel guilty about? Or was Danny afraid that by admitting where he had been the past few days he would be in even more trouble than for simply being missing? What was he trying to protect? His pride? Something else?

"Do you have any idea how worried we've been?" asked Maddie, admonishing. "For God's sake, I filed a missing person's report!"

"Your mother and I have spent every waking moment out searching for you," added Jack.

"And don't expect us to believe you've been in that cave the whole time," said Maddie. "It's one of the first places we looked."

At that piece of information, Danny glanced up at his parents, startled, before snapping his eyes again to the coffee table.

"After the stunt you pulled on Thursday…" his mother said. She squeezed her eyes shut and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Help us to understand, Danny. What is this? A cry for attention?"

Jack latched onto that immediately. Between him and his wife, Jack had always been the most uncomfortable with punishing Danny, preferring to joke and have fun with him, or at least try to be seen as 'cool' and 'relatable' - endearing, thought Jazz, but not always effective. This train of thought must have seemed like an out, an alternative to yelling at his son.

"I realize your mother and I have been really busy hunting down that merkid," he said, "but if you need us, Danno, there are easier ways to get our attention than skipping school or running away from home."

"I wasn't-" Danny started, but then he grimaced and lowered his head even further.

Maddie and Jack stared at their son - Maddie sternly and Jack entreatingly - for so long that even Jazz began to squirm. Eventually, Jack's hopeful expression lost its hope, and Maddie sighed.

"I can't begin to tell you how disappointed we are in you, Danny," said Maddie. Jazz winced; she knew where this was going, and it was so much worse than yelling. Anger, sure, anger was uncomfortable, but it flared up and burned itself out like a match. Disappointment, on the other hand, was a wound that festered.

"First your grades start slipping, then you skip school, _lie_ to us, run away from home. Our town is being _attacked_ , and like it or not your father and I are the only ones who can fight these creatures. We don't have time to cater to you having a- a rebellious streak! I know you must think this sounds harsh, but we are working so hard, fighting so hard, so that you and Jazz don't get hurt. We're trying to protect _you_ , so the least you could do is act right. Is that really so much to ask of you?

"What you've done, Danny," concluded Maddie Fenton, "was extremely selfish."

Hearing that final word, Danny flinched and lowered his head again, until Jazz could no longer see his face. His clenched hands were trembling. Jazz couldn't tell if he was about to yell or cry.

"I get it," he said softly, voice bitter. "I screwed up. So are you going to ground me or not?"

Jack and Maddie glanced at each other, thrown off by their son's reaction. Jazz _knew_ there had to be so much more to unpack regarding Danny's behavior. She knew it. Whatever was going on wasn't so simple that it could be chalked up to a 'rebellious streak'. This was so obvious that the wrongness of it was even registering with their normally oblivious, merperson-obsessed parents. And they did not know how to respond. This was a parenting first for them.

Jazz hoped they would try talking to him more and not skip straight to punishment.

But over the years she had come to expect disappointment from the Fenton parental units. Ironically, it was the one area where they never let her down.

"Yes, we're grounding you," said Maddie.

What followed next was a list of arbitrary punishments meant to discourage Danny from acting out again but which would ultimately take one of his biggest emotional supports - his best friend Tucker - out of the picture. His phone, computer, and Xbox were all confiscated, and if he wasn't at school, Danny was to be at home. For a _month_.

Jazz grinded her teeth and dug her fingernails into the chair in front of her, scowling. She couldn't believe her parents! How many years of damage were they causing? Danny's behavior was clearly a cry for help, but rather than give it to him, they were going to make things worse!

She was opening her mouth to express all of these things when, unexpectedly, Jazz's name dropped from her mother's lips.

"- and to make sure that you follow these rules, Jazz will be in charge of you while you are grounded."

" _What?_ " exclaimed Jazz, just as Danny's head flew up and he protested, "I don't need a babysitter!"

"Why am I being punished for what Danny did?" Jazz demanded. All thoughts of defending her brother had been dashed.

Maddie's stern expression was now turned on her daughter. "You're always asking us to treat you more like an adult. Well, now we are asking you to take on some very adult responsibilities. Your father and I don't have time to be at home to keep an eye on Danny. We need to rely on you."

"Maybe you should make time!" argued Jazz. "This is your family!"

"And this is your lives!" Maddie countered. "What happened at the beach, at the town hall - you and your brother could have died! _I_ almost died!"

Jack put a hand on his wife's shoulder. Surprisingly calm, he said, "Jazzypants, if we could be at home with you kids we would. You are the most important things in the world to us. I understand why you're upset, but we're asking you to do this because we trust you."

Jazz rolled her eyes. _Yeah, sure, ply me with compliments_.

"And I promise you," added Jack, throwing his arm around his wife and pulling her close, "as soon as we hunt down and get rid of that merboy and the nest he calls 'home', you and Danny will have one hundred percent of our attention!"

"When have we ever gotten one hundred percent of your attention?" Jazz muttered.

Jack must not have heard her, because he plowed ahead. "So what do you say, Princess? Can we count on you?"

"Fine," said Jazz, but she crossed her arms and pouted to let them know she was still displeased.

Danny, meanwhile, was back to hanging his head, but Jazz could see that his entire body was tensed with suppressed anger or indignation.

"As I was saying, Danny," continued Maddie. "Jazz will be in charge of you while we're out of the house. She will drive you to school and back every day, monitor you while you do your homework, and give us a report every night."

"Anything else?" said Danny quietly.

Maddie looked up at Jack, who gave her an approving nod - _parenting accomplished_. "For now, that's all."

"So can I go now?"

"After you have given us your phone. Jack, would you go get his computer and his Xbox, put them in our closet?"

"Sure thing, babycakes," said Jack, pecking his wife on the cheek as left.

Maddie, stepping up to her son, held out a hand and waited in silence. After several long, uncomfortable seconds, Danny shoved his hand into his pocket and procured his phone, as well as a shower of sand. He slapped both into his mother's palm, grabbed his backpack, stood up, and stomped up the staircase to his bedroom.

As soon as Jack was back on the second floor landing, confiscated tech in his arms, Danny's bedroom door slammed shut.

"Well, I hope you're happy with yourselves," Jazz had declared curtly before similarly excusing herself from the room.

Safe to say, it had been hard to get any more sleep that night.

Turning back to her diary, Jazz sighed, rallied her emotions, and continued her entry.

_That's enough complaining, though. If anything, I should see this as an opportunity. Not only do I get a chance to help Danny, who seriously needs some help, but I can also use this in my case study:_

" _The Effects of Cognitive Dissonance on the Developing Mind in Regards to the Existence and Threat of Mythical Creatures in One's Day-to-Day Life"._

 _Okay, the title's a work in progress. I'm sure it will come together eventually. But putting that aside for now, I can't express just how excited I am to pioneer this project. Who could have predicted what a psychological smorgasbord merpeople in Amity Beach would be, not to mention a scientific one and a philosophical one, too! All of a sudden these creatures that everyone said could not exist, exist! How are people dealing with that? How are they rationalizing it? How do we go back to 'normal' after this? What does that say about_ _other_ _mythical creatures? Is_ _magic_ _real now?_

_Danny and I are especially interesting subjects in this case study because of the unique environment we were raised in. Two parents whose entire life's work was devoted to merpeople, who were mocked by our community, whose ideas we rejected throughout our childhood for the sake of our sanity and social survival, only for us to learn that they were right all along. We have two equally prominent and yet conflicting worldviews embedded in us - one with merpeople and one without. And they are equally prominent. Although we have not believed in this stuff for a long time, Danny and I are practically experts on merpeople through osmosis alone. I didn't even realize this about myself until recently, until my classmates started bombarding me with questions about these two attacks on our town. Questions I was stunned that I knew the answers to._

_I can only assume Danny's getting the same treatment from his classmates. That has to be especially jarring for him - he's always been a bit of a loner._

_That being said, I don't think it's an accident that Danny's behavior and attitude started changing so drastically this past week. I mean, yeah, he's been a little weird since he started high school, what with the rubber gloves he's started wearing while doing the dishes, his new habit of taking showers in the middle of the night, and all the rain gear he puts on every time it gets cloudy. I think he's been having some body anxiety, which is totally normal for a fourteen-year-old. All of his classmates are going through puberty, freaking out about their bodies changing, and every single one of them probably feels paranoid, like everyone is watching them all the time._

_So, body anxiety and social anxiety lead to poor sleep and a lack of focus, which would explain why Danny's grades have started dropping this year and the general increase in his levels of moodiness._

_And now_ _merpeople_ _._

_I can't even imagine how scared Danny must have been when that merman attacked Mr. Masters's party. Danny's always been terrified of water. He never even learned to swim when we were kids. Then he got caught in the wave that wrecked our beach. He's lucky, we're all so lucky, that he didn't drown. All while watching this human-eating monster straight out of the nightmares our parents' stories gave us as children trying to kill our mom. And who knows what happened to him during the attack on town hall? So, not only has he been through these two horrible experiences in a single week, his whole worldview has been shattered by it._

_None of_ _that_ _is totally normal for a fourteen-year-old. I'm more introspective and psychologically aware than anyone I know, and even for me, it's been hard to reconcile these events and start building my new reality. Sometimes it's all I can think about, and the next minute, I have to remind myself that any of these things actually happened. What must it be like for Danny?_

_If only he would talk to me! I tried to get him to open up on the way to school today, but it was like talking to a brick wall. No matter what I said, Danny insisted "nothing was wrong" and he "didn't want to talk about it", and he avoided me for the rest of the day. It was the same this afternoon - a cold shoulder._

_But I'm nothing if not determined! Thanks to being 'in charge' of Danny, I'll be getting to spend a lot of time with him from now on. I'm sure I'll get through to him eventually. I'll find out what's bothering him, and maybe, finally, he can start getting the help he needs._

Satisfied, Jazz closed her diary and put it away in the top drawer of her desk. While it was officially separate from the notes on her case study, her daily reflections in this notebook could be just as valuable to her work, even if they were not as objective.

Standing up, she stretched her arms above her head and felt the vertebrae in her spine pop. She really needed to get back into yoga. Spending all day every day at a desk doing school work and college prep was taking its toll on her body. Jazz sighed, exhausted from the poor night's sleep and the general stress of the last week.

She decided to check on Danny.

Stepping into the hallway, Jazz paused to listen, a habit she'd been in for so long she couldn't remember when it started. The house was quiet. That meant that her parents were in their lab or out on the Boat. No danger of encountering them. Knowing that, some of the tension released from her body.

Had Jazz been avoiding them since they'd bequeathed responsibility over Danny to her? Yes, absolutely. She had resolved to give her daily 'update' on Danny as a text as often as possible. With any luck, she could avoid seeing them for a few more days, especially if they were as busy as they claimed to be. At the very least, she wanted to have some more insight into Danny's situation before she engaged in another conversation with them, otherwise she was sure they would get into a fight.

Well, they would probably get into a fight no matter what, but at least Jazz would have a more informed opinion to throw into it.

She walked the few steps down the hallway to her brother's room. The door was shut, just one more wall that Danny had raised against her and against their parents. Jazz decided to keep it businesslike. She had pestered Danny enough today, and this was looking to be a project of patience as much as perseverance. She would just let him know that she was about to start dinner and then give him his space.

Jazz knocked lightly on the door. "Danny…? Are you in there?"

There was no answer from the other side. Sighing, Jazz grabbed the doorknob and let herself in. "Danny, I just wanted to-"

Danny was seated at his desk, head resting on his folded arms, deeply asleep. There was a school book open in front of him, some notebook paper shoved off to one side, a pencil lying abandoned next to his loosely curled fingers. His back rose and fell in time with his slow, even breaths.

Jazz couldn't help but smile affectionately at him. It had been a while since Danny had looked so peaceful, so vulnerable. She would let him sleep a bit longer; dinner could wait. He obviously needed this.

She could not resist, however, walking up to him, smoothing down his tangled black hair, and pressing a kiss into one of his temples. Who knew that her dork of a brother could look so adorable?

As she left Danny's room, closing the door gently behind her, Jazz thought of all the times over the years she had conspired with Danny to keep the incidents of bullying at school a secret from their parents. Both she and Danny knew how they would worry, overreact, try something ridiculous like shadowing him at school while they menaced his classmates with Fenton Harpoons or chucked Danny's bullies into the merperson containment unit downstairs in the lab with a bucket full of piranha to help the lesson sink in.

Jazz felt a small but poignant ache unfurl in her chest. She had never expected to be outside of one of Danny's secrets, and it distressed her to know that she didn't have the slightest idea what was going on with her baby brother. Neither had she anticipated that being excluded would hurt her feelings this much.

"Nope," she told herself, forcing a smile. "Chin up. You are a bright young woman who is going to be a brilliant psychologist someday. If anyone can do this, it's you." Holding doggedly onto that thought, Jazz went into the rest of her evening.

* * *

Danny was done. He'd had enough. What did they always say? "If you don't like the game, quit playing"?

And really, what other options did he have? He'd been exiled from the entire freaking _ocean_ , Vlad's victory over the Merfolk was as good as in the bag, and Danny's own parents thought he was the biggest threat around, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. Hello, _who_ had caused the giant tsunami wave? And why was literally _no one_ talking about the Mernotaur that nearly ate the good people of Amity Beach?

So what if Vlad had, with cinematic flair, framed Danny to make it look like he caused the entire town hall fiasco, leeches, Mernotaur, and all? Danny had saved Maddie Fenton's life, hadn't he? Didn't that mean anything?

But Vlad had guaranteed that nobody was going to listen to the "Merboy Menace".

Yes, that's what the news was calling him.

This is how Monday went for Danny.

He had greeted his sister with a grunt when he walked into the kitchen that morning and then proceeded to ignore her. He knew her forced pep was exactly that - _forced_. Jazz was just as unhappy with their parents' arrangement as he was, but unlike Danny, his neurotically perfect sister didn't know how to let people down.

Danny felt, possibly, even worse than when he'd been bleeding out in merperson prison at the bottom of the ocean. He had managed to find some gauze pads and bandages in the medicine cabinet upstairs as he was getting ready for school, which he used to cover up his stitches, all of which he then hid under a baggy hoodie and sweats. This less-than-fashionable costume happened to nicely cover his other bruises as well. And hey, look on the bright side, at least no one had punched him in the face.

He was so hungry he was nauseated. Was that a thing? Being so hungry you weren't even hungry anymore?

It was as he was listlessly pouring the milk on his cereal that Danny realized three things all at once: A) the tv in the kitchen was on, B) it was showing the news, and C) he _was_ the news.

"Citizens Reeling After Merboy Menace Terrorizes Town Hall" was the headline.

Danny scowled at the monicker. He knew he was not going to like what was on the screen, but now that he was aware of it he could not tear his eyes away.

Currently what was playing was a silent montage of the fight at the town hall. Danny hadn't realized that someone filmed the whole thing, but it made sense, in retrospect. Of course Vlad would have wanted his oh-so-magnanimous rescue of the town on record. However - and here, his pulse jumped a little in a naiive spark of hope - news footage of that night would also show Danny out there protecting the people of Amity Beach from the Mernotaur.

But that is not what he saw. Instead, he saw himself standing in front of the Mernotaur, arms crossed and smirking at it like they were in cahoots or something, which cut to a clip of him repelling people with a water shield, to him knocking people roughly aside with his aquatic cable, bowling his parents over, flinging a football player off of his back, pinning his parents to the floor, and finally being kicked off of the stage by Vlad Masters. At which point the film montage of the Merboy Menace started over from the top, rinse and repeat.

Danny was horrified. In the heat of the battle, he hadn't realized how bad his efforts at defending everyone would look from the outside, especially when every taunt he had thrown at the Mernotaur would not have been audible to any onlookers. Even if he had made an effort to project his words to everyone in the room, he didn't know if telepathic speech could be picked up on camera. That was something to test out with Tucker and Sam.

But he _hadn't_ thought to project his words to the whole room in the first place, so whether or not they played the soundbites to accompany the footage, it would not have made a difference. So yeah, big moot point.

Even Danny had to admit that he did not look like a Friendly Neighborhood Merboy on camera. The pasty white skin, pointed ears, glowing green eyes, and fangs certainly did nothing to help. He would have been afraid of him, too.

The words the newscaster Tiffany Snow was saying in accompaniment to the footage finally trickled into his ears. Phrases like "dozens still hospitalized" and "people living in terror" and repeated demands for the merboy to be "brought to justice".

Brief hatred for Vlad flashed through him. His right hand twitched at the memory of their handshake a few hours ago, at the words Vlad had the gall to say to him in front of his parents, knowing that Danny would imperil himself by reacting.

**I am genuinely glad you're back, Daniel. My next game would be much less fun without you.**

'Next game'. The creep already had something else in the works. Of course he did. But it didn't matter. Danny was not going to play this time.

No, he was determined from this point forward to go back to being just Danny Fenton. Whatever happened next was not his responsibility, because clearly he was not up to the task. Just because he was half fish didn't mean he was suddenly in charge of all other things half fish. He hadn't taken up responsibility for the entire human race back when he had been one hundred percent human, had he? Right. Let his parents handle this, since apparently they were the only ones _qualified_ to fight evil merpeople.

And maybe they were. All Danny had done was make a mess of things.

Guilt and shame snuffed the anger he was feeling, leaving him feeling tired and pathetic. He put the milk back in the fridge and hit the power button on the television as he walked to the kitchen table.

Sitting down hurt. He did this slowly, putting his bowl of cereal on the table before bracing himself with both hands to lower his battered body into the very hard chair.

Jazz was pretending not to stare at him while she sipped her coffee. Unfortunately, Jazz was about as subtle as Jack Fenton at a fudge convention. Danny narrowed his eyes at her, picked up his spoon, began eating…

...waiting for it…

"So, Danny."

And there it was.

" _No_ , Jazz," he snapped at her. "Believe it or not, I _don't_ want to talk about it."

A flicker of hurt crossed her expression, which quickly morphed into a pitying smile. "You know I'm here for you when you do."

"Yeah, so you can relay everything I say to Mom and Dad. Gee, thanks." His hand holding the spoon shook above his bowl. He forced it to still, to dip into his cereal, to bring the cereal to his mouth. He chewed mechanically, shocked out how much he didn't have an appetite today.

"I'm not going to rat you out to Mom and Dad," said Jazz. She hesitated. Then she added, slowly, carefully, "Unless it's something they really need to know."

"Which is exactly why I don't want to talk to you," said Danny. "You don't get to decide that. You don't _get_ to make decisions for me. This is my life, Jazz, so I'd appreciate you butting out of it."

Fenton Family Stubbornness was a real thing, and Jazz had inherited it the same as Danny. "But if you're in trouble-"

"I'm _not_ ," growled Danny. "I'm fine. Okay?"

"You're clearly not fine," said Jazz. "I'm only trying to help you."

"I don't need your help. Look, I know Mom and Dad put you in charge of me, but that doesn't mean I'm suddenly going to pour my heart out to you. _This_ ," Danny waved a hand between them, indicating the fact that they were eating breakfast at the same table, which was a phenomenon reserved solely for weekends and holidays, "is not us bonding. This is me being grounded."

"That's not all it has to be," insisted Jazz, reaching out a hand towards Danny's, her smile again irritatingly full of pity.

Danny grabbed his bowl and jerked away from the table, stifling a hiss as the motion tugged on his stitches. A clammy sweat broke out at his hairline. He immediately rubbed the moisture away on his sleeve.

Whatever retort he was going to throw at her had evaporated in the short bursts of fear he felt at the idea of Jazz discovering his injuries or seeing his skin turn snow white. And in fear's wake - guilt. Shame.

"I'm not talking to you," Danny muttered again. Jazz prodded him a few more times, but at this point he wasn't even listening to her, too entrenched in his own thoughts.

He successfully ignored Jazz all the way to school, leaving her behind in the parking lot and camouflaging himself in the horde of the Neptune High student body. Trembling at the effort of even walking around, Danny found his locker and started rifling through it for his morning classes' books.

"Danny!" exclaimed two wonderfully familiar voices.

He was ready this time. Danny quickly turned around, putting his back up against the lockers, and raised his arms in a big 'x' in front of himself. "Please, whatever you do, just don't hug me."

Tucker froze, arms already outstretched. Sam shoved the technophile out of the way, planting herself squarely in front of Danny, hands on her hips, expression furious. "Then can we hit you? I think we deserve to hit you."

Tuck tugged on one of her arms and failed to move her. "You sure love hitting people, don't you?"

"Only when they deserve it," she growled. "How long have you been back? Why didn't you text us? I for one would have loved to know that you weren't dead!"

Danny felt himself wilting. He was too tired for this. His friends were the two people who were supposed to be on his side, and now even they were attacking him.

But he probably did deserve to be punched by Sam Manson a few times, for drawing her and Tucker both into his stupid, extremely dangerous, futile fight against Vlad.

"C'mon, Sam," said Tucker, continuing to pull at her arm. "I'm sure Danny has a perfectly reasonable explanation for why he didn't tell us he's back. Right? Danny?"

Danny scrubbed his hand over his face. "I didn't get back until, I don't know, like three in the morning. _Vlad_ found me. Turned me over to my parents. Now I'm grounded for a month, and my parents think I'm a selfish asshole. A selfish asshole who, by the way, had his phone taken away."

All of the fight immediately left Sam. "Oh my god. Danny. What did you tell them?"

"They were crazy looking for you!" Tucker added.

"I didn't tell them anything," said Danny bitterly. "So now they think I was running away from home in some sort of misguided cry for their attention." He muttered, "Their attention is the last thing I need right now."

A moment of awkward silence filled their pocket of space, even as the loud jumble of teenagers moved through the hall around them. Danny sighed and returned his attention to his school supplies.

"Erm," said Tucker. "Did you, at least, you know…?"

"Did you get an audience with the Merfolk Empress?" Sam clarified.

"Yep," said Danny. He stared into the shadow of his open locker. He didn't have the courage to look at his friends, to see their inevitable expressions of pity and disappointment. "When I told her what Vlad was planning, she basically said 'good riddance' and that she hoped the sirens and humans killed each other off. Then she banished me from the ocean on threat of death."

They were speechless for a beat. Then Tucker said, "Ouch. That's… harsh."

"You know that's not your fault, right?" said Sam. "It sounds like she had her mind made up way before she talked to you. I bet there wasn't anything you could have said to change it."

 _You weren't there_ , thought Danny miserably. _You didn't get to witness me put my tailfin in my mouth._

He changed the subject. He didn't think he could stand talking any more about what happened with Birghid. He would break. "I saw the news this morning, too. The 'Merboy Menace'?"

"That's fearmongering propaganda!" Sam exclaimed, with so much intensity that Danny couldn't help but turn around and look at her. She raised her voice alarmingly so that everyone in the hallway could hear her. "And anyone who believes that the merboy was trying to hurt us is a stupid, gullible, ignorant sheep who doesn't even deserve his help!"

"What the-? Sam!" said Danny, grabbing Sam's arm and pulling her close, as though to hide her. He glanced around them, terrified that someone would put the pieces together. How could they not?

"I'm only speaking the truth," the girl asserted as she glared at anyone walking by. "And I'm not going to apologize for it."

"Look, I appreciate that… I think… but it honestly doesn't matter anymore. Nobody's even going to see the 'Merboy Menace'-" he put air quotes around the stupid, b-list supervillain name the media had given him "- again. Vlad won. I'm throwing away my suit."

"Wait, what?" said Tucker.

"You can't do that!" Sam protested.

Danny let them talk over each other for about thirty seconds before he shut his locker, sidestepped them, and started walking to Mr. Lancer's classroom. His friends were flanking him seconds later.

"Seriously," said Tucker, much more soberly than before. "What made you change your mind?"

Danny sighed. "Like I said, if I fight Vlad again, I will die. He will literally kill me. Birghid was my last option, and now she isn't. There isn't much more I can do here. I'm… going to do what I should have done from the beginning and let my parents handle this."

"You really think your parents stand a chance against him?" asked Sam quietly.

He considered this. Vlad had already successfully kidnapped his mom and manipulated his parents into at least two of his plots. Maybe they didn't stand a chance against him. Maybe no one did. "They stand a better chance against him than I do."

By the time they reached Lancer's room, Sam was nodding thoughtfully. "It's probably for the best. At least this way you'll be safe."

"Well, saf _er_ ," said Tucker. "Vlad seems to like testing his mad scientist creations out on you, in case you haven't noticed."

Danny nodded. "Fine. That's whatever. Self defense is a long way off from going around purposefully trying to thwart his plans."

They took their seats with a few minutes to spare before the bell rang. On either side of Danny, his friends bantered back and forth about how the news was treating the attack on town hall, berating Vlad, the news anchors, and anyone who bought into the false story they were telling. He knew this was Sam and Tuck trying to make him feel better, so he smiled, sunk into his chair, let his eyes fall half-closed, and just listened.

"What a headline, though!" said Tucker, waving his PDA. "'Citizens Reeling After Merboy Menace Terrorizes Town Hall'. It's got alliteration and I'm _pretty sure_ that's a fishing pun."

Sam raised an eyebrow at Tucker. "What?" he asked, sounding defensive.

She lifted her hands in a show of nonviolence. "Nothing! I'm just surprised you know what alliteration means."

"I'm actually a good student when I want to be," he proclaimed proudly.

"Indeed," intoned Mr. Lancer, who was suddenly hovering above their desks, looking way too pleased at the fact that Tucker was talking about literary terms without having his arm bent. "On that note, let's segue into today's lesson, shall we?"

Paulina, of all people, raised her hand. "Mr. Lancer?"

"Yes, Miss Sanchez?"

"Do you really expect us to sit here and do work after everything that happened last week?" Around the room, her classmates were nodding in agreement. "Isn't that, like, totally insensitive to our collective trauma or something?"

"Heinlein's _The Puppet Masters_ ," Danny heard Lancer mutter, shaking his head. "I understand, Miss Sanchez, that the events of this past week were, indeed, traumatic. And we are going to put some time aside this week to address everyone's concerns. Mrs. Ishiyama is, at this very moment, organizing a special assembly for tomorrow morning that will answer a lot of our questions and promises to alleviate many of our worries over our individual safety. In the meantime, school is school, and what do we do at school, class?"

In response, crickets. The tinny-sounding variety that lived in a place called YouTube.

"Ha ha," Lancer drawled. "I can tell by the level of your practical jokes just how traumatized you all are. Now put that cell phone away unless you would like it confiscated." Turning and striding back to the front of the room, he continued: "The answer is _learn_. In this classroom in particular you will learn English, just as you will learn math in your math classes today and science in your science classes. The world doesn't stop turning just because of a few mind controlling parasites, people."

Danny, on his part, fell asleep in most of his classes that day, as well as at lunch and at his desk that night in the middle of trying to do his homework. Without anyone to disturb him, that was his deepest and longest nap.

He awoke from it with a jolt, disoriented, a puddle of drool on his desk and smeared across his cheek. Bolts of pain shot through his muscles at the sudden upward movement and from the unnatural position he had fallen asleep in. Dazed, Danny turned off his lamp and drug himself to his bed, where he lay down on top of the comforter on his back, staring at the ceiling and hurting.

'My next game would be much less fun without you.'

Despite Danny's resolution to leave that psychopath alone, Vlad's words had nagged at him the entire day. Now alone in the dark, the man's promise seemed more imminent. Somewhere in Amity Beach, it was all too likely that Vlad's so-called game was already in motion.

Danny closed his eyes, determined not to think about it and to ignore the feelings of guilt and shame that churned in his stomach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now, we're caught up with all of the chapters on ff.net! Phew! 
> 
> This chapter was a booger to write. The pacing, the dialogue, how to sequence it - I cut and pasted and moved paragraphs all over the place like it was some convoluted jigsaw puzzle. And in the end I had to cut it in half because of how long it was getting. It's amazing how 5 measly bullet points on an outline can turn into 20 pages.
> 
> But, YES. This next arc IS based on "My Brother's Keeper" (with a nod in this chapter at "The Fenton Menace".)
> 
> Guys, that episode was one of my all-time favorites as a kid. I was 12 when Danny Phantom originally aired, and I really vibed with the Danny/Jazz relationship, because I also had an older sister by two years who wanted to be a therapist when she grew up. And I LIVE FOR reveals. So, I'm crazy amounts of excited for the next few chapters.
> 
> It's Jazz's very first POV in Treading Water, and it won't be the last. I always try to capture some of the character's voice in the narration, so I hope Jazz's tendency to psychoanalyze everyone around her, her persistent optimism, her legitimate worry for her little brother, and her slightly arrogant know-it-all personality came through. I don't usually write long paragraphs of characters' thoughts; honestly, I get annoyed when I read characters analyzing each other's every move, not only because it bogs the story down but also because that's not how most people think. In this case, however, I think Jazz does think that way. Her diary especially lends itself to exploring this.
> 
> Next chapter won't be for a couple more weeks, at least. Until then...  
> T.F.C~


	29. Chapter 29

_For mermaids are the most unnatural of creatures and their hearts are empty of love._

\- Imogen Hermes Gower, _The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock_

* * *

The Neptune High student body was packed into the auditorium for Mrs. Ishiyama's special assembly. Danny figured out the contents of said assembly within three seconds of entering the room.

For stretched across the top of the stage, painted in black and neon green letters on a silver banner, were the words:

**Fenton Merfolk Awareness and Prevention Program**

" _If it lives in the ocean, we'll kill it for you!" - the Fenton Guarantee!_

"'If it lives in the ocean, we'll kill it for you'," read Sam. She scowled. "Your parents are unbelievable."

"They're just… _enthusiastic_ ," said Danny, slumping forward in his seat and burying his face in his hands. Shivers ran up and down his spine, and his muscles were tense in the expectation of danger. His so-called 'fishy sense' had been triggered since Jazz pulled into the parking lot that morning. It was no wonder, when the world's top merhunters had their blood up and he was their number one target. "Haven't we sat through this stupid seminar enough times?"

"Knowing merpeople are real kinda gives it a whole new meaning," Tucker pointed out. "I think people actually want to listen this time."

Danny scanned the room. It was true, what Tucker said. There was a completely different energy among the students, nervous and expectant, whereas all of the years before had students napping, mocking the Fentons under their breath, or scheming ways to disrupt the presentation.

The worst had been in junior high school when someone rigged a bucket of raw fish to fall on his parents as they began their speech. Danny had felt so ashamed - of them, _for_ them. He never understood how they managed to take it in stride. But they had just cleaned themselves up, finished their presentation, and went on to the elementary school as though nothing had happened.

His eyes landed on his parents, who were standing at the side of the stage, chatting eagerly with Mrs. Ishiyama while Mr. Lancer and the other teachers finished directing students into the auditorium. Danny also noted several large metal crates lined up on the stage behind the podium, silver and marked with the green-and-black Fentonworks logo. Just imagining what was inside of them was giving him a stomachache.

Finally, all of the students had shuffled into the auditorium and taken their seats. Lancer tapped on his mike, said, "Testing, testing," a few times, and began.

"All right, people, settle down, settle down. _I see you, Mr. Burks, put that away or you're out of here!_ Right. Ahem. Today we have two very special guests joining us who I'm sure will have a lot of useful information to tell us about merpeople and, more specifically, how to stay safe in these uncertain times. Please welcome to the stage, Jack and Maddie Fenton."

There was a polite amount of clapping, and then the entire auditorium fell silent as Danny's parents strode onto the stage. For the first time that Danny could remember, Jack and Maddie Fenton had everyone's attention, and their audience was prepared to take them seriously.

No one was taking them more seriously than Danny.

He felt a warm hand cover one of his fists, which were clenched in his lap. Glancing down, Danny saw Sam's delicate fingers resting on top of his hand; he loosened his grip, and Sam intertwined her fingers through his, giving them a gentle, reassuring squeeze. Her pulse was steady and strong - magnified through the hyper-awareness of his water mode. Danny offered her a small smile of gratitude and turned back to the stage, focusing on Sam's heartbeat, until his own was syncing up to it and calming him down.

"Hi kids!" Maddie greeted the room cheerfully. "We are so excited to be here talking to you today. We have a lot to cover, so let's dive right in!"

She clicked a remote in her right hand, and behind her, an image appeared on the projector. It was a hand-drawn diagram of a merman, from head to tailfin. It was anatomically correct, generic in its features, but its face was contorted into a snarl, deep furrows etched between its brows, on its forehead, in the lines beside its nose, its lips pulled back to reveal long fangs. Its eyes glinted black and cold, like a demon's. At its sides, its fingers were curled so that each one of its black claws was visible.

"This," said Maddie, voice suddenly cold, "is a merperson. Just like the one that we saw on the beach nine days ago, and just like the one we saw last Friday night at the town hall. There is almost no one in this room today who hasn't been affected by these monsters. My husband and I are here to tell you what we are going to do about it - and what _you_ can do about it."

Maddie clicked her remote again, and the slide changed to an image of the wreck on the beach following Vlad's party, alongside a screenshot from the news report of Danny using his hydrokinesis to knock people out of the Mernotaur's path. His face was stark in his concentration, fangs bared - aggressive.

"The first thing to know is that merfolk are incredibly dangerous. Their physical strength is that of an average human, but by leveraging their telekinetic control over water, a single merperson can gain the destructive force of an army.

"Merfolk have been plaguing the east coast of our country for decades. Twenty years ago, they attacked my husband, myself, and our friend Vlad Masters on a research vessel, killing almost everyone on board. Since then, with the support of Vlad's DALV Corporation, my husband and I have been tracking their attacks on ships up and down the coast." Here, Maddie took a moment to click through several slides showing pictures of abandoned freighter ships, a beached yacht, an overturned fishing vessel, its hull bobbing in the waves amongst the cargo. "These creatures have a deep hatred for humankind, and they don't stop at trying to kill us. Given the chance, they will _eat_ us - alive. None of the victims of these attacks has ever been found, their bodies ever recovered."

She let that thought hang in the air for a few seconds before she continued.

"We've long suspected that telekinesis was not the extent of their powers. Legends from various cultures dating back hundreds, even thousands of years have talked of the merfolk's ability to shed their tails and come on land." Her next slide showed an old painting, depicting from left to right several beautiful mermaids walking out of the sea, seducing men, dragging their victims back into the water, and swimming around with their skulls clutched in their hands victoriously. "Not until recently have we had definitive proof of this, but now we do.

" _This_ ," said Maddie, clicking to the next picture, "as you well know, is the merboy who attacked us on Friday." It was another photo of Danny from the town hall, this time using a hydrokinetic tentacle to hold a man in the air. "And _this_ ," she continued, "is a photo of him our buoys took three weeks earlier, when he first breached our security and came on land."

It was the photo. _The_ photo. The stupid photo that he had stupidly let his parents' buoy take of him when he had stuck his head out of the water like an idiot.

The image was bright but clear. There he was in his merform, visible from the neck up above the small crests of the waves. He was squinting into the sky, mouth slightly ajar, white hair plastered against his head while his pointed ears poked through it. Gills open as they struggled to pull oxygen from the air. Not the most flattering picture, but he hadn't known at the time that his floundering in the bright sunlight was being _documented_.

Danny tightened his grip on Sam's hand, and she rubbed reassuring circles into his skin with her thumb.

"What we have is an enemy who has come out of the ocean to terrorize us on land. His appearance at our beach and later at the town hall, his impartial transformation into his aquatic form, was most likely deliberate - because these creatures can fully disguise themselves as human. After fleeing from our fight, it's very likely that this merboy is still hiding somewhere among us."

"That's why you've gotta stay vigilant!" Jack jumped in, his booming voice crossing the room even without a microphone. "Who knows where that merboy is hiding, and how many other merpeople he mighta brought with him! Your neighbors, your classmates, even your own family members could be human-eating monsters in disguise!

"Now I bet you're all wondering - how can you tell if someone's a merperson? Well, there are several signs you want to watch out for," explained Jack as his wife clicked to the next slide, a list of 'How to Tell if Your Neighbor is a Merperson'. There was a visual aid in one corner of the slide, a cartoon of a businessman wearing a suit. One half of the man was in the light, and he looked like your Average Joe. The other half, in darkness, showed a vampiric grin, glowing red eyes, and a face covered in scales.

"The merperson will probably be someone whose background you don't know, someone who just 'moved to town'." Jack said this skeptically, as if the idea of moving anywhere was a ludicrous thing no upstanding citizen would even dream of doing. "Some long lost uncle, or a foreign exchange student from a country you've never heard of. They'll try to get you alone with them. They'll especially try to lure you to the beach, so that they can drag you under the water and share you with their buddies! But no matter how good their human disguise is, there will always be a flaw. Maybe they'll smell like fish. Maybe they've got webbed toes. Maybe they won't even have any vocal chords.

"In the end, what I'm saying is these fish people don't know us as well as they think. And that's the good news for us! 'Cause as soon as we can spot 'em, we can beat 'em! So, if you do suspect that someone close to you may actually be one of these half-fish freakazoids, the best thing you can do is to call us immediately. We've got our own hotline!"

"We'll investigate, and if we find any merpeople, you can count on us to get rid of them, quickly and efficiently," added Maddie.

"And in most cases, painfully!" said Jack before spinning around to face his wife. "Can we show them the weapons now?" he asked, squirming with excitement.

Maddie smiled back at him brightly. "I'm ready when you are, hon!"

 **No,** said Danny. He felt Sam flinch as his voice unexpectedly entered her head, saw Tucker on his other side wincing and turning to look at him with a troubled expression. Danny couldn't bring himself to care or to apologize. He was too angry - too unsettled. **This isn't right. This is… they're making this up. Kaima was literally the first merperson they've ever seen, so why are they…?**

He didn't get an answer, not that he was expecting one. This wasn't a safe place to talk.

On stage, his parents were holding up their first merhunting weapon, a classic and a favorite, the Fenton Harpoon.

The weapons came out one after the other and were soon lining the stage at the Fentons' feet. The Fenton Harpoon joined the likes of the Fenton Extendable Porta-Harpoon, the Fenton Harpoon Hurlinator, the Fenton Fisher, the Fenton Grappler, and the Fenton Electrocutioner.

Then out came the gun that had haunted what snatches of sleep Danny had been able to get the past few nights: the Fenton Bazooka.

"And this here is the Fenton Bazooka!" said Jack, proudly brandishing the enormous weapon. "This baby shoots a special blue goo designed to corrode merfolk flesh! Totally harmless to humans, though - and I'll prove it to you!" Saying that, Jack used his teeth to yank off one of his gloves, opened up the valve storing the aforementioned 'blue goo', dunked his hand inside, and pulled it back out again, covered in the viscous, glowing chemical. "See?" he said around the neoprene glove dangling between his teeth. "Perfectly safe!"

Danny couldn't help but remember the sound of the Mernotaur's skin sizzling where the Bazooka had hit it, the burning sensation in his own nose and throat at just the _smell_ of the stuff, the feeling of having that gun inches away from delivering a lethal blast to his head.

He still had a bruise on his back from where his parents had shot him with it.

Danny didn't realize he was trembling until Sam's grip on his hand tightened. He forced himself to take a deep breath, let it out, shove the memories aside.

Next on the list was one that Danny had never heard of, probably one of his parents' more recent inventions.

"The Fenton Desiccator!" proclaimed Jack, having wiped off the 'blue goo' on the stage's red velvet curtain - much to Mrs. Ishiyama's displeasure. "Still just a prototype, but once we get the kinks out, this lil' guy will pack a real wallop, especially against any of the merfolk coming up on land. What's it do? Well, it sucks up all of the moisture from anything you aim it at! Guaranteed to leave merpeople as nothing more than mummified husks when it's done with 'em! Haven't quite figured out how to make it safe for humans, but that's why it comes with a protective suit installed right here in the handle."

Jack flipped open a panel on the back of the little silver gun, revealing a large red button which he promptly smashed his thumb against. Then, somehow, enough metal plating shot out of the back of the gun to completely wrap around the hulking form of Jack Fenton. Once it was all in place, a thick plastic shield unraveled from the head piece and snapped over his face.

Danny's dad immediately lost his balance and, despite frantically windmilling his arms, fell over backwards with a crash.

"Yup, that's one of the kinks!" he called out from the floor.

At that point, Danny's mom took over the weapons presentation. She showed a picture of the Fenton Merfolk Assault Craft and then one of the Fenton Buoys, while she held up an actual Baby Buoy in her hands for the audience to see. Her explanation of how they used these devices, however, was probably too technical for most of her teenage audience to understand.

"Now we want to show you something we are extremely excited about," she said, and she went to the next slide in their presentation. "The Fenton Siren Speeder!"

By this point, Jack had extracted himself from the Fenton Desiccator and was ready to leap back into the weapons presentation. He jabbed his thumb back at the picture of the submarine with an almost manic grin. "I designed her, and she's my best invention to date! She even outclasses the MAC!"

"The Speeder," said Maddie, "combines the chemical- and sonar-based tracking capabilities of the Buoys with the underwater maneuverability of a submarine and is outfitted with not only weapons to fight and capture the merfolk but also shields to repel them and their telekinetic abilities."

"She's basically impenetrable!" exclaimed Jack. "So we're gonna use her to track down the merfolk's nest and wipe 'em out at their source!"

"We should - if everything turns out - be ready to take the Speeder out into open waters in a matter of days," added Maddie.

"And now," said Maddie, turning to one of the crates and pulling out a cardboard box, "souvenirs!" She placed the box on the stage in front of her and pulled out one of the 'souvenirs' inside. "The Fenton Anti-Creep Stick!"

What she held in her hands was a perfectly ordinary wooden baseball bat with a green sticker on the side.

"I know what you're thinking," said Jack. "'Isn't that just a baseball bat?' I asked the same thing first time I saw one. But it turns out it's not just any baseball bat - it's a baseball bat with the name 'Fenton' on it!"

"Remember," said Maddie, "you should call us immediately if you see a merperson, but in a pinch these will help you to defend yourself until we can get to you. And the best part is they're free! Who wants one?"

At once, a dozen hands shot into the air; Danny noticed that most of them belonged to the jocks, Dash included. He scowled, imagining them going around hitting their usual targets with the Anti-Creep Sticks in the name of self-defense. It was, in short, yet another bad idea with the name 'Fenton' on it.

As Danny's unsuspecting parents handed out Anti-Creep Sticks, the auditorium filled with the chatter of restless teenagers. For the moment, it was safe to talk again. Mostly Danny was just happy that the weapons presentation was over.

"I'm not sure whether we just sat through a safety seminar or a marketing campaign," Sam remarked, rolling her eyes. "And what good is anyone going to do with an Anti-Creep Stick?"

"I guess hitting sirens with a baseball bat is better than _not_ hitting sirens with a baseball bat," replied Tucker with a shrug.

"You okay, Danny?" asked Sam. Danny realized that she was gently pulling at her hand, which he was still squeezing in his own. He quickly released it and rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment.

"I'm just glad that's over," he muttered, too flustered to look at her.

"Want to tell us what the mindspeak was about earlier?" asked Tucker in a low tone.

Danny cast a furtive glance around to make sure that no one was paying attention to them - and yes, business as usual. One of the nice things about being a social outcast, he supposed.

He sighed. "I just don't get why they're suddenly acting like they know everything about merpeople coming on land, when again, they have _literally_ seen three merpeople in their entire careers. And nothing that they were saying is even true! Me and Vlad are the only merpeople who can come on land, and I don't have webbed toes _or_ smell like fish!"

Tucker frowned thoughtfully. "So, I've been wondering this for a while now, but… if your parents have never captured any merpeople, how come all their equipment works?"

Danny raised his brows at that. Until recently, he had always assumed their weapons were bogus, because he had always assumed merpeople were also bogus. But, all of their tracking devices had immediately picked up on Kaima, and their corrosive blue goo was definitely effective against merpeople - and only merpeople.

"Well, think about who's funding them," said Sam. "DALV Corp? _Vlad's_ company?"

"Of _course_ ," Danny growled. "And of course he'd be feeding them all this info on merpeople, because he _wants_ their weapons to work because he wants them to hunt down the Merfolk! And when he's done letting them play merhunter, he can disable all of their gear with a freaking _app_ on his phone!"

By this point, Danny was gesticulating something fierce, and both Tucker and Sam grabbed at his arms to pin them down.

"That's terrifying," Tucker said. "And what's worse, it makes sense."

Sam chuckled half-heartedly. "Hey, look at the bright side. At least he can't disable a harpoon."

Danny offered her an equally half-hearted smile, which quickly fell back into a frown. "Even if everything they were saying is wrong, it's going to have the entire town paranoid that there are merpeople hiding among them."

"You're going to have to be extremely careful, Danny," said Sam.

"Luckily you've sworn off using your powers and don't have to worry about transforming on accident anymore," Tucker pointed out.

Danny nodded, but he didn't feel very comforted.

On the stage, Lancer had taken the microphone again. "Alright, back up here, we're not done yet." He waited a few moments for the students to settle down, which they did surprisingly quickly. It showed how invested they must have been in the assembly so far.

"Before we send you back to class, I want to introduce to you a new member of the Neptune High staff. Please welcome Dr. Penelope Scylla."

As the students clapped and craned their heads to get a better look, a woman in a red skirt suit walked onto the stage, her matching red high heels striking the planks of the stage with every step. When she stopped next to Lancer and turned to face the audience, Danny noticed that she was wearing sunglasses even though they were indoors and that her red hair - _Geez, this lady likes red_ \- was absurdly coiffed atop her head.

She plucked the mike from Lancer's hand. "Good morning, Neptune High!" she greeted cheerfully. "Let me tell you what an _honor_ it is to be here in this _,_ Amity Beach's time of need."

Dr. Scylla handed the mike back to Lancer, who continued the introduction. "Dr. Scylla is a licensed teen therapist and has agreed to come onto our staff to help us sort through some of the feelings we've been experiencing since the… unpleasantness of the last couple of weeks. She'll be on campus for the foreseeable future, so if you feel like you need someone to talk to about all of this, please make use of this excellent resource."

The therapist slid up close to Lancer so she could speak into the microphone again. "Please, come on by! My door is always open, and I'm _so_ very much looking forward to meeting all of you."

"No thank you," muttered Danny, crossing his arms and leaning back in his seat. He was getting enough 'therapy' at home without having to be subjected to it at school, too. Dr. Scylla's office was a place he would be staying far away from, if he could help it.

* * *

Jazz squeezed through the students on their way out of the auditorium until she was close enough to wave at Mr. Lancer and get his attention. He smiled at her, nodded, and hung back to give her enough time to reach the foot of the stage.

Once Jazz was standing in front of him, he turned to Dr. Scylla at his side and said, "Dr. Scylla, I'd like to introduce you to one of Neptune High's best and brightest students, Jazz Fenton. Ms. Fenton, this is Dr. Penelope Scylla."

Jazz shook Dr. Scylla's hand enthusiastically. "I'm so excited to meet you, Dr. Scylla! You are just what this school needed. I've been offering my classmates some impromptu counselling the last couple of weeks, but I'm sure I haven't been doing nearly as good a job as an actual licensed therapist."

"Jazz is planning to study psychology after graduation," Mr. Lancer explained. "And truly, you won't find a more brilliant mind here."

"How wonderful to meet you, Jazz!" said Dr. Scylla. "I'm sure you and I will have a lot to talk about. You wouldn't happen to be related to Jack and Maddie Fenton, would you?"

"Yes," said Jazz, frowning. "Unfortunately."

"Oh, don't say it like that!" the therapist replied. "I'm sure your _intimate_ knowledge of the merpeople helps you to give your classmates an informed response to their questions, wouldn't you say so?"

"Well, I guess…"

"I myself have been spending hours of my free time catching up on your mother's publications. They're absolutely _scintillating_! But stop me before I go on and on about it - I'm sure you don't need me to tell you what amazing work your parents are doing."

To be polite, especially because she hoped to talk to Dr. Scylla more and more as colleagues, Jazz offered the lady a smile, even though it felt more like a grimace. "I really don't."

"I'm still in the middle of unpacking my office," said Dr. Scylla. "I want to be ready to 'open shop' by lunchtime today! So why don't the both of you join me and let's continue this conversation…" At this point, she slid one foot forward across the floor, pointing both fingers towards the door with exaggerated motions. "... over there!"

Jazz and Mr. Lancer glanced at each other out of the corner of their eyes, stumped. Eventually, Mr. Lancer stepped up. "Of course! Lead the way."

Dr. Scylla's office was a few doors down from the front office, so, centrally located, well labeled, and easy to find. There was already a nameplate installed next to the door, and a sign hung underneath that read, _Come on in!_ in cheerful blue and gold letters next to a smiling picture of the Neptune Narwhal.

 _She definitely has the 'spirit' part of 'school spirit' down,_ mused Jazz, following the therapist into her office.

Just as Dr. Scylla had said, she was in the middle of unpacking. There were a few decorations up, books on shelves, her credentials hanging on the wall behind her desk, but most of the room was filled by stacks of cardboard boxes.

"So tell me, Jazz!" said the therapist, immediately bending over a box and pulling out various fidget toys, which she lined up on the edge of her desk with meticulous attention to their spacing and orientation. "Why do you want to study psychology?"

"Oh! Err." Jazz chuckled, a little off guard. She shouldn't have been - she had written about it enough in her college entrance essay drafts. It had just been a long time since a real live human being had asked her that. "I've always been a very good student, and from the beginning I could tell that I was smarter than a lot of kids my own age… I guess you could say that I wanted to use my talents to help people, and one of the best ways to do that, in my opinion, is through psychology. It also bothers me how stigmatized mental illness is, so if I could do something to change that, I really want to try. And I'm really interested in how the human mind works. It's one of the last great mysteries of the universe!"

"Wonderful!" responded Dr. Scylla as she straightened the fidget toys. "You really are your parents' daughter."

"Ah…" With those six words, it felt like all of the wind had been let out of Jazz's sails. "How… how so?"

"Two geniuses, dedicated to helping people while also exploring the ocean, another of the last great mysteries here on this planet. The parallels are _astounding!_ "

Mr. Lancer, seeing that Jazz was not taking Dr. Scylla's commentary the right way, stepped up beside her and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Ms. Fenton certainly embodies the _best_ qualities of her parents, it's true, and so very many more qualities all her own."

Jazz flashed her teacher a genuine smile, which he returned.

It was, perhaps, time to tactfully change topics, away from Jazz and especially away from her parents. "Dr. Scylla? I was actually hoping you could talk to my brother."

The therapist's bright green eyes darted up to look at Jazz over the tops of her sunglasses. "Oh? Do you have a brother, Jazz?"

Jazz nodded. "Yeah. His name is Danny, and well, he's been taking all of this merperson stuff really badly. He's not acting like himself, and he even ran away from home a few days ago. He won't talk to anyone, especially me. Maybe you could get him to open up?"

"I think that's an excellent idea, Jazz!" Dr. Scylla replied.

"As do I," agreed Mr. Lancer. "I think Daniel would greatly benefit from talking to you. I'll send him to your office as soon as it's ready this afternoon."

"Oh, marvelous!"

A knot of tension released from Jazz's shoulders. Dr. Scylla was definitely a little over-peppy, but she had way more experience than Jazz did in dealing with hard-to-reach teenagers, and a proper counselling session was probably the best thing for Danny right now.

Glancing around the office, imagining how her little brother might feel sitting in this room, Jazz noticed a huge glass tank in the back corner of the room, on a large table sandwiched between a bookshelf and the wall. In the tank were a few inches of sand, some plastic decorations, a bowl of water, and a gigantic, bulbous crab the size of a small dog. Its body alone was as big as a human head, and its front pincers looked like they could snap a person's fingers right off.

Dr. Scylla looked between Jazz's dumbfounded expression and the tank and laughed. "Oh, that's my coconut crab!" she explained. "I call him Bertrand! Did you know coconut crabs are the world's largest terrestrial anthropods? They're omnivorous, too - they've been known to eat cats and birds and even cannibalize one another. Isn't that just _fascinating?_ "

"Uh, sure…" said Jazz. "And you're keeping one in your office because…?"

"Everyone needs a hobby, don't they, Jazz?" Dr. Scylla beamed, batting her eyelashes.

Jazz had no answer to that, but it did confirm that Dr. Scylla was undeniably weird. Then again, most adults who chose to work for a school had some eccentricity. An obvious example was the balding English teacher standing beside her.

Glancing at her watch, seeing that she was missing her second period class, Jazz began to excuse herself. "I guess I should get back to Pre-Cal! Thank you again, Dr. Scylla!"

"No, thank _you_ , Jazz!" said the therapist. "And don't worry - I'll take good care of your brother!"

* * *

"Look, I don't mean to be rude, but why am I here?"

Danny glared at the red-garbed woman over her small army of fidget toys. He really wasn't trying to be rude, but this was the last place he wanted to be today, or any other day, for that matter.

Anyway, it wasn't like his problems were the kind he could just up and tell a stranger.

How would that conversation even go? _Hi, my name is Danny, and I'm part-merperson. Also, Vlad Masters - you know, the famous billionaire? - he's actually evil and wants to take over all of humanity, killing my dad, marrying my mom, and making me some sort of evil apprentice in the process._

It was very unlikely that a high school counselor could help him with this, or would even believe him in the first place - and if she did believe him, the first thing she would probably do would be to hit him with an Anti-Creep Stick, run screaming from the room, and call his parents' hotline.

This was a waste of time. And humiliating. Whose idea was this, anyway?

Dr. Scylla raised her eyebrows at him over her sunglasses and steepled her fingers in front of her. "Wow, your sister was right. You _are_ a handful, aren't you?"

Danny blinked. "Wait, Jazz said that?"

"The way she described it, you've been causing a mountain of problems at home, putting a huge burden on her, on your parents... She's given up on trying to help you, and I can't say I blame her."

He gaped at the therapist, mouth trying to form words. "So… so this was _her_ idea? Is she the one who talked Lancer into sending me here?"

"I'm sorry if Jazz thinks you're a lost cause, Danny, but I can assure you, I don't think that at all. I can already tell you're a _great_ kid. You're just going through some problems right now, and that's not your fault."

Danny was stunned. Was that really how Jazz felt about him? He knew he had been blowing her off the past couple of days, but this was _Jazz_ , the girl who had spent five months working towards a breakthrough with Spike Spencerman, who Danny had to this day never heard utter a single word. He knew his parents expectations for him were shot, but even _Jazz_ had given up on him?

Dr. Scylla leaned forward, smiling kindly. "Don't worry about what she thinks. We're here to focus on _you_. No matter what anyone tells you, Danny, you deserve to be happy, and we're going to make sure that you believe it."

Danny sighed, feeling suddenly incredibly tired and just a bit… hopeless. Tears pricked at his eyes; he quickly looked away, turning his gaze to the blanket-covered terrarium in the corner of Dr. Scylla's office. "I just wish I didn't feel so miserable," he whispered.

"Of course you do," she said. "No one wants to feel miserable. No one deserves to feel that way."

Dr. Scylla stood and walked around her desk until she was standing beside Danny's chair, where she crouched down to his level and reached out a hand to his shoulder. "Now, Danny, today I just want to introduce myself to all of the kids who need someone to talk to, but Mr. Lancer has arranged for you to spend a half hour with me every day after lunch, for as long as it takes. We'll get to the bottom of your misery and then we'll boot it right out the door."

"Do I have to?" asked Danny in a small voice

"Officially, yes, you have to. But don't look at this as a punishment, look at it as an opportunity! An opportunity to create a better you!" The therapist patted his shoulder and then nodded her head to the door. "Now go on, I know you have places you'd rather be."

Relieved, Danny quickly scrambled to his feet and made a beeline to the door.

"See you tomorrow!" Dr. Scylla called after him.

* * *

Scylla watched the boy run from the room with a feeling of delight. So _that_ was Danny Fenton?

She straightened, walked over to Bertrand's tank - relishing the rhythmic sensation of her two legs moving her across the floor - and pulled away the blanket covering him. She trailed her fingers over the glass, imagining the possibilities.

Her king had told her the boy must not be killed. However, he had strongly suggested that anything else she might do to him was fair game.

Scylla grinned, her canines like fangs. "Oh, Bertrand - this is going to be so much _fun!"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, there you have it! Chapter 29!
> 
> I hope my adaptations are acceptable! Scylla is, for everyone's reference, identical in appearance to Spectra in her human form. The name Scylla (sil-uh) comes from Greek mythology. Scylla is described as one of two sea monsters that Odysseus must sail between in Homer's Odyssey, her counterpart being Charybdis. Scylla is also a more seaworthy name than Spectra.
> 
> I'm not sure how big a fanbase Bertrand has, but I hope I have not offended anyone by reducing him to a coconut crab. However I sliced it, poor old Bertie in his original form just didn't fit into Treading Water. But coconut crabs are terrifying, and I encourage everyone to look them up.
> 
> Anyway, I would love to hear any theories you have about, well, anything. There are a lot of subtle things weaved into this chapter, and I'm really curious about what details y'all pick up on and how you interpret them.
> 
> Until next time,  
> T.F.C~


End file.
